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The Strategy of 

The Great War 

A Study of its Campaigns and Battles in their 

Relation to Allied and German 

Military Policy 



By 

William L. McPherson 

Author of "A Short History of the Great War" 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

^be Iftntckecbocher press 

1919 






Copyright. 1919 

BY 

WILLIAM L. McPHERSON 



N0\/ -4 1919 



Ube Iftnicfeerbocfter press, iftew ISorb 



©CI.A5364J4 



MY WIFE 



PREFACE 

The first six chapters of this volume appeared in the 
Sunday issues of the New York Tribune in January and 
February, 1919. Parts of four otjier chapters appeared 
in later Sunday issues of the same newspaper. The 
author's thanks are due to Mr. Ogden Reid, editor-in- 
chief of the Tribune, for permission to reprint them in 
book form. 

In these studies the author has elaborated the theo- 
ries outlined in his daily "MiHtary Comment" in the 
Tribune from April 15, 191 8, until the signing of the 
armistice. 

This war differed from all other wars. It was fought 
on a scale transcending all experience. Its develop- 
ment could not be foreseen by the general staffs which 
were charged with conducting it. Many new and 
disturbing factors entered into it. The strategy on 
both sides was confused and empirical. Novel condi- 
tions in the field also revolutionized tactics. The old 
balance between the offensive and the defensive was 



vi Preface 

deranged. It had to travel slowly around a circle to 
re-establish itself. The war, by its very immensity, 
overrode the strategists. It worked out its own 
strategy and its own tactics. 

It is the purpose of this volume to interpret the 
influences which controlled the military policy of the 
two belligerent groups, and to present a clear view of 
the curious evolution of tactics which led from open 
warfare through the deadlock of rigid positional fight- 
ing around again to semi-open and then to practically 
open warfare. To the military student this phase is 
of absorbing interest. 

What may be called the grand strategy of the war 
was largely affected by political as well as by purely 
military considerations. Germany's fatal blunder — 
that of forcing the United States into the contest— is 
traceable to political misjudgments of long standing. 
Politics, diplomacy, strategy, and the moral deficiencies 
of the German character all had their roles in the gi- 
gantic drama entitled "World Power or Downfall." 
Taking these all into account it is the writer's object to 
show, in a simple and non-technical way, why Germany 
lost a war which she might have won if she had con- 
ducted it with a keener sense of her own geographical 
and military limitations. 

The first six chapters deal with the general principles 



Preface vii 

underlying German and Allied strategy. The others 
analyze the battles and campaigns in which the working 
out of these principles is illustrated. 

The details of most of the main operations of the war 
have yet to be filled in. There are few critical works 
available. Perhaps the most satisfactory books of this 
sort produced up to date are volumes ii and iii of General 
Palat's La Grande Guerre sur le Front Occidental — stud- 
ies of Joffre's Alsace, Lorraine, and Belgian offensives 
of 1914. 

For the German interpretation of German strategy 
Lieutenant-General Baron Freytag-Loringhoven, Deputy 
Chief of the German General Staff, is the most useful 
source. He has been drawn on freely in this volume 
because when he wrote his two books — Deductions 
from the World War and A Nation Trained i?t Arms or 
a Militia? — ^he thought that Germany was going to 
win, and was willing to speak somewhat frankly and 
indulgently of the causes which, in his opinion, had 
retarded victory. The elaborate series of descriptions 
of battles and campaigns issued under the patronage 
of the German General Staff — Kriegsberichte aus dem 
Grossen Hauptquartier — shows only here and there a 
glimmer of critical frankness. 

General Basil Gourko's book, War and Revolution 
in Russia, is an excellent first-hand authority on the 



Vlll 



Preface 



conditions on the Russian front. It is candid and 
discriminating. Ambassador Morgenthau's Story con- 
tains valuable first-hand information about the Darden- 
elles campaign. Good American books on the war 
are scarce. The author has depended for facts to some 
extent on The International Cyclopedia annuals for 
1914, 1915, 1916, and 1917, and on the first two vol- 
umes of Frank H. Simonds's^ History of the World War. 

Other sources used were Louis Madelin's The Victory 
of the Marne, George F. Schreiner's From Berlin to Bag- 
dad, Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Azan's The Warfare of 
Today, Professor Douglas W. Johnson's Topography 
and Strategy in the War, Senor E. Diaz-Retg's The 
Attack on Verdun, and Field Marshal Haig's admirable 
reports on British operations in France from 191 6 to 
1918. 

In a volume, to be published immediately, entitled 
A Short History of the Great War, I shall outline more 
in detail the events and campaigns which have been 
touched on in this book for the purpose ot illustrating 
the strategical problem. 

William L. McPherson. 

New York, May i, 1919. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Preface ....... v 

General Outlines 

I. — The Moral Equation . . . . i 

II. — The Numerical Equation ... 20 

III. — Germany's Long Run of Luck . . 40 

IV. — Sea Power in the War ... 60 

V. — Development of German Strategy . 80 

VI. — Development of Allied Strategy . .100 

Campaigns and Battles 

VII.— The First Marne . . . .119 

VIII. — The Battle of Flanders . . . 139 

IX. — Russia's Early Successes . . .158 

X. — The Tragedy of Gallipoli . . .178 

XI. — The Creation of Mittel-Europa . .199 

XII. — Joffre's "Nibbling" — ^The Development 

OF Positional Warfare . . . 221 



X Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XIII.— Verdun ...... 241 

XIV. — The Somme — Hindenburg's Retreat 261 

XV. — Russia's Collapse — Rumania . . 281 

XVI. — Germany Challenges America . . 303 

XVII. — The West Front in 191 7 — Cambrai 324 

XVIII. — Italy's Part in the War . . . 343 

XIX. — Ludendorff's Gamble .... 364 

XX. — Foch's Victory Offensive . . . 389 

Index ...... 413 



The Strategy of the Great War 



The Strategy of the Great War 



CHAPTER I 

THE MORAL EQUATION 

There are two aspects to the German d6b^cle — one 
material and one moral. Speaking in the narrower, 
technical sense, Germany lost the war through certain 
specific errors in military policy. By November, 1918, 
the consequences of these blunders had brought the 
German armies in Belgium and France to the edge 
of a colossal disaster — an exaggerated Sedan or Jena. 
The German High Command elected to escape destruc- 
tion by surrendering. 

The German military failure was unquestionable. 
It resulted from unintelligent strategy and a misuse 
of military resources. But the German moral failure 
was even more decisive. It resulted from the ines- 
capable limitations of the German character. Speak- 
ing in the broadest possible sense, Germany lost the 



2 The Strategy of the Great War 

war before she began it. She had the physical means 
to achieve victory on a limited scale — to create, for a 
time at least, a Middle Europe dominated from Berlin. 
But she lacked the sagacity to temper her megalomania. 
Bismarck was dead. He had left no successors. So 
the Germany of William II bungled along, sacrificing 
what might have been attainable through a prudent 
localization of effort to empty and grandiose dreams 
of Teuton world empire. 

The German leaders and people were handicapped 
at critical stages of the war by not knowing exactly 
what they were fighting for. A wise statesman would 
have said: "Let us consolidate our power in Central 
and Eastern Europe. Let us throw a bridge across 
the Bosporus and push our railheads to Badgad. But 
let us stop there. That is enough for our generation, 
as the conquest of Alsace-Lorraine and the creation of 
the empire were enough for Bismarck's generation." 

But there were no wise or moderate statesmen left 
in Germany. Whenever things looked encouraging 
at the front all Germans were pan-Germans. In the 
back of the German brain was the obsession of ethnical 
and moral superiority which the pan-German propa- 
ganda had so powerfully fostered. All classes of Ger- 
mans were more or less conscious of a mission to go 
out and conquer the world and then remodel it in the 



The Moral Equation 3 

image of Kultur. This spirit was unreasoning and 
fanatical. And since they were all deeply affected by 
it the German leaders gradually lost contact with po- 
litical and military realities. They began to envisage 
the war not as a struggle for limited territorial objec- 
tives, or political priority on the continent of Europe, 
but as a duel between a higher form of civilization 
(their own, of course, which was destined to survive), 
and various lower forms (those of their enemies, which 
were destined to perish). 

No illusion could have been more baseless than that 
the Germany of William II was elected by destiny to 
conquer and transform the world. Germany was too 
barren spiritually and intellectually to play the role 
of Rome or of Revolutionary France. She could 
not hope to establish an empire as extensive and 
durable as that of the Caesars. She could not even 
hope to establish one as unstable and transient as 
Napoleon's. 

She had by patient labour forged a military instnmient 
powerful enough to subdue many of her neighbours. 
But she lacked utterly the moral weapons with which 
a conquering generation or a conquering civilization 
must be supplied if its sway is to become permanent 

Rome possessed the indubitable moral superiority 
which reconciles the conquered to the rule of the con- 



4 The Strategy of the Great War 

queror. The Roman lawgiver completed the work 
of the Roman legionary. The Roman proconsuls 
brought the subject peoples peace, order, and security 
imder law. So the golden age of civilized Europe, 
Asia, and Africa was the age of Trajan, Hadrian, and 
the Antonines. 

In the first volume of The Decline and Fall of the 
Roman Empire, published in 1776, Gibbon wrote of this 
period: 

If a man were called to fix the period in the history 
of the world during which the condition of the 
human race was most happy and prosperous, he 
would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed 
from the death of Domitian to the accession of 
Commodus. 

The Romans were true civilizers and empire builders. 
So were the French in the earlier years of the Revolu- 
tion, when they carried through Europe the torch of 
liberty and the standard of democratic equality. The 
peoples of the Netherlands, Germany, Austria-Hungary, 
and Italy, whom the French freed from an outworn 
feudalism, welcomed the deliverance. They benefited 
materially by their change of status. The introduc- 
tion of the French civil code, with its equalization of 
individual rights, was, in itself, a long step toward 
modern civilization. 



The Moral Equation 5 

Napoleon created the kingdoms of Bavaria and 
Wurttemberg and the Grand Duchy of Baden. He 
organized the Confederation of the Rhine. He en- 
larged Saxony. All the South German states were 
vastly stimulated under the Napoleonic regime. They 
still owe it a debt of gratitude. 

In one of the many public squares of Munich stands 
a monument commemorating the Bavarian soldiers 
who fell in Napoleon's Moscow campaign. There were 
thousands of them. One of the inscriptions reads: 
Sie sind auch fur das Vaterland gestorben ("They also 
died for their country"). Possibly in a larger measure 
than the writer of the inscription intended, Bavaria's 
sense of obligation to Napoleon's overlordship is thus 
acknowledged. France carried into these annexed 
countries ideas and a spirit of progress from which 
they profited enormously, and hundreds of thousands 
of their citizens fought without reluctance in the French 
armies. It was only when Napoleon broke entirely 
with the traditions of the Revolution and began to 
exploit these states cold-bloodedly in the effort to 
further his insane schemes of family aggrandizement 
that they turned against him and prepared to desert 

him. 

Under Napoleon Poland enjoyed a brief political 
restoration. He created out of territory allotted to 



6 The Strategy of the Great War 

Prussia in the Polish partitions the Grand Duchy of 
Warsaw. He won the confidence of the Poles, although 
his policy toward them was plainly based on self- 
interest. He drew on them for a marshal, many gen- 
erals, and more than one hundred thousand soldiers. 
Many Poles followed him to France in 1814. 

Napoleon delivered Italy from the Austrian yoke 
and gave the Italians a forestaste of national unity 
when he created the Kingdom of Italy, with his step- 
son Eugene as viceroy. He gave the eastern Adri- 
atic provinces autonomy. Italy's political status was 
greatly improved under the French regime. Spain, 
too, would have remained a willing ally if Napoleon 
had not fallen into the fatal error of trying to establish 
his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. 

Napoleon's own follies wrecked an empire which 
rested for a time (and might have continued to rest) 
on the good will of the peoples absorbed into it. But 
there is no known instance of a subject people recon- 
ciling itself to German domination. 

There is something in the German character — a sur- 
viving strain of barbarism, perhaps — which stands in 
the way of any expression of magnanimity toward the 
conquered. The German is no assimilator. He has 
never been able to impress supposedly inferior peoples 
with a sense of his ethnical or moral superiority. He 



The Moral Equation 7 

has, in fact, so little confidence in his own superior- 
ity that he has never been willing to admit to equality 
of status or opportunity the subject and supposedly 
inferior peoples within the German boundaries. 

Inflamed by the arrogant chauvinism of the pan- 
German propagandists, the German people started 
out in 19 1 4 to impose their civilization on the rest of 
the world. A futile and pathetically misguided con- 
ception! When had the Germans, under the most 
favouring circumstances, ever Teutonized, or even 
placated, another race whose hard fate had brought 
it under German domination? 

At the time of the Zabern incident, when Germany 
was irritated by the thought that Alsace was still 
unreconciled and perhaps irreconcilable, the Berliner 
Tagehlatt published an article comparing the feeUng of 
Savoy and Nice toward France with the feeling of 
Alsace and Lorraine toward Germany. Savoy and 
Nice were acquired from Italy by Napoleon III in 
1859. Alsace and Lorraine were acquired from France 
by Bismarck in 187 1. Only twelve years' difference in 
time between the two transactions! Yet nobody but a 
historian could remember in 19 13 that Savoy and Nice 
had ever belonged to the present royal house of Italy, 
while the Zabern incident demonstrated that Alsace 
and Lorraine were hardly more German in affection 



8 The Strategy of the Great War 

than they were in 1871 — despite more than forty years 
of official proselyting and persecution. 

Alsace-Lorraine went to the Prussian school of as- 
similation for forty-eight years in all. But she never 
was re-Teutonized, although her people are of an ancient 
German and Rhine Valley stock. The Poles of Prus- 
sia had been under German rule for a century and a 
'quarter. In all that period they had been pitilessly 
restrained and disciplined. Everything possible was. 
done to eradicate their race and national spirit. They 
had been forbidden to speak their own language. Their 
lands had been taken away from them by a ruth- 
less policy of expropriation. Yet they never yielded 
to German pressure. They relied on the superior 
tenacity of their own race instincts and culture. And 
they conquered at last. Parts of Poland which Prussia 
took nearly a century and a half ago are still more 
Polish than Prussian, and have properly reverted to 
the re-established Polish state, on whose coffin the three 
sovereigns of Russia, Prussia, and Austria-Hungary 
sat — but sat in vain — for generations. 

There is also North Schleswig. This is the Danish 
part of the province of Schleswig, taken away from the 
King of Denmark in 1864 by Austria and Prussia. 
These two confederates divided Holstein and Schleswig 
between them. But Prussia soon appropriated Aus- 



The Moral Equation 9 

tria's share. By the treaty of Prague, under which 
Austria legahzed the Prussian seizure, it was stipulated 
that the inhabitants of North Schleswig should have 
the right to determine by a plebiscite whether to 
remain Prussian or to go back to Denmark. No 
plebiscite was ever taken. For more than fifty years 
Prussia tried to assimilate this little Danish remnant. 
But all her efforts — including a proscription of the use 
of the Danish tongue — failed ignominiously. 

Not a single alien element within the Prussian 
or German body politic has been reclaimed through 
the proselyting energies of German Kultur. Physical 
power is in itself impotent to awe the mind or conquer 
the imagination. Only moral virility can do that. 
The prophets of German destiny looking out over a 
world on which the stamp of German civilization was 
to be impressed forgot the Alsatian, Pohsh, and Danish 
fizzles. They clung to the primitive belief that the 
sword is the only civilizer. They carried the sword 
into Belgium, Poland, the Baltic Provinces, Finland, 
Lithuania, the Ukraine, Serbia, Albania, and Rumania. 
But everywhere the result was the same. The German 
conqueror might overrun and trample down peoples. 
He might erect military governments. But nowhere 
was he capable of really constructive and assimila- 
tive statesmanship. Nowhere could he conciliate or 



10 The Strategy of the Great War 

extract willing service. As an empire builder, because 
of Teuton tactlessness, his accomplishment was almost 
zero. 

German policy in Belgium was the most hideous 
possible revelation of Germany's moral incapacity. 
As Bethmann-Hollweg admitted, the Germans seized 
Belgium in violation of treaty guarantees. It was an 
act of "military necessity." Germany was therefore 
bound in prudence to make the occupation as little 
oppressive as practicable to the Belgian people. And 
Belgium's heroic defence did not lessen the obligation 
of the invaders to deal generously with a country which 
had given Germany no shadow of offence and whose 
sole culpability consisted in lying across the easiest 
pathway of the German armies into Northern France. 

Germany undoubtedly envied Belgium her great 
port of Antwerp and her strip of coast at the eastern 
entrance to the English Channel. German policy 
looked forward to the ultimate absorption of both 
Holland and Belgium. Statesmanship therefore dic- 
tated an attitude of conciliation on the part of the 
German invaders and a powerful emphasis of the 
material advantages which might accrue to the Bel- 
gians through closer association with the German 
Empire. 

Biit in the heat of her anger over the stubborn resist- 



The Moral Equatio n 

ance of the Belgians at Liege and over some negligible 
guerilla fighting in the Liege and Namur districts, 
Germany unloosed on Belgium those monstrous retalia- 
tions which shocked the civilized world. A deliberate 
programme of frightfulness was carried out against a de- 
fenceless civilian population. After Aerschot, Dinant, 
and Louvain it was next to impossible for any Belgian 
to consider contact with German civilization as any- 
thing but a defilement. 

Germany gained some important military advantages 
by violating Belgian neutrality. She secured an 
entrance into France and carried the war to the gates 
of Paris. But she at once forced the hesitating British 
Government into the anti-German alliance. And her 
barbarities behind the fighting lines not only excited 
the undying enmity of the Belgians, but destroyed the 
last vestige of German moral prestige in the neutral 
world. 

The German lifted his mask at Louvain. There- 
after no cunning or hypocrisy on his part could conceal 
what a German domination of Europe would mean. 

Yet in Belgium he had had a real opportunity to 
imitate the tactics of Napoleon and to create local 
support by playing on the racial prejudices and aspira- 
tions of a large disaffected native element. If Berlin 
had suppressed reprisals with an iron hand and had 



12 The Strategy of the Great War 

protected the Belgian population from military terror- 
ism, rapid progress might have been made in detaching 
the Flemings from the Walloons. 

There had been a century-long antagonism between 
these two Belgian stocks, based mainly on a difference 
in language. The Walloons spoke French. The Flem- 
ings spoke their own ancient tongue. The former 
idiom gained a complete ascendancy under the French 
occupation from 1794 to 18 14. It became the legal 
language for all Belgium. After the Netherlands were 
united under Dutch sovereignty in 181 5 the use of 
Flemish was gradually restored in Belgian Flanders. 
This excited Walloon opposition and was one of the 
causes of the revolution of 1830, when Belgium achieved 
her independence of Holland. 

After independence French became again the official 
tongue, although the constitution indorsed the prin- 
ciple of a free choice in the matter of languages. The 
decade from 1830 to 1840 saw the beginnings of the 
Flemish literary revival, which has persisted ever since. 
At first it was merely cultural. But from 1870 on it 
assumed a political aspect also. Agitations for the 
legalization of the use of Flemish in the criminal courts, 
in the secondary schools, in the public administration, 
and in official documents were successful. In recent 
years the "Flamigants," as they were called, had been 



The Moral Equation 13 

working to make Flemish the exclusive tongue in all 
the Fleming districts, compelling its adoption in the 
whole school system up to the university, in local 
administration and in the relations of the central 
government with Flemish Belgium. . 

The Germans knew all this. They had a lever 
ready made with which to segregate two sensitively 
antagonistic elements in the Belgian population. 
They had the opportunity to pose as restorers of an 
ancient native tongue akin to their own. Moreover, 
after offering the Flemings lingual freedom, they had 
a chance to bind them more securely to the German 
cause by offering them political separation and complete 
autonomy. 

Yet German cunning could not undo the work of 
German savagery. The atrocities committed by the 
German soldiery united the Walloons and Flemings in 
common hatred of the invader. The breach between 
the two Belgian stocks closed long before the separatist 
intrigue could get fairly under way. It was not until 
December, 191 5, that Governor General Bissing con- 
verted the State University of Ghent into a Flemish 
University. It was not until March, 1917, that Bel- 
gium was partitioned into two military pro-consulates, 
Brussels becoming the Flemish capital and Namur 
the Walloon capital. Finally, in December, 19 17, a 



14 The Strategy of the Great War 

Flemish legislative body, acting, under German mili- 
tary authority, proclaimed the complete independence 
of Flanders. 

The few Belgians who were willing to accept racial 
"self-determination " from the German oppressor styled 
themselves Activists. They were attracted mostly 
by the high salaries and personal privileges offered 
them. But they never had a genuine following. The 
real leaders and forces in the former Flemish movement 
denounced Activism as treason. The Activists were 
"a staff without troops," as the Germans themselves 
were ultimately forced to admit. The new Flemish 
state, pro-Teuton in its leanings and intended to form 
the basis for a completely Teutonized Belgium, re- 
mained to the end a political fiction. The German 
despoiler, murderer, and terrorist had bungled the job 
of the German "liberator." The Flemings wished to 
speak their own language, even though it was cousin 
to the German. But they shrank with abhorrence 
from any political "liberation" which might come to 
them from the instigators of the Louvain massacre. 

The two German political pro-consuls in Belgium 
were Bissing and Falkenhausen. Both were typical 
German bureaucrats, without vision or humane instincts. 
Cardinal Mercier, who defied their tyranny, said of 
them: 



The Moral Equation 15 

Falkenhausen was more cruel and inhuman than 
Bissing, and more perfidious, insidious, and danger- 
ous. There was not much to choose between them, 
however. 

They were true advance agents of the civiUzation 
which Germany intended to inflict on the rest of the 
world, 

German policy thus failed utterly in Belgium, where 
conditions favoured local divisions and partial assimila- 
tion. It failed as conspicuously in the dependencies 
detached from Russia. The Germans also entered 
Poland as "liberators." They promised an end of 
Russian misrule. But the Poles had had some experi- 
ence with Prussian methods of "liberation." They 
preferred Russia's tender mercies to Prussia's. They 
endured for more than three years the joint German 
and Austrian occupation and gave a passive assent to 
German-Austrian plans for creating a Polish buffer 
kingdom, under Teuton protection. 

Their lot was alleviated by the inability of Germany 
and Austria to agree on the status of the new state. 
The Polish Regency Council was able to play one claim- 
ant off against the other. Both Germany and Austria 
tried to recruit troops in Poland. They succeeded 
indifferently, except in a few districts, along the West 
Galician border. The Poles had flocked by the tens 



1 6 The Strategy of the Great War 

of thousands to Napoleon's standard. But they balked 
at serving either Germany or Austria. The Polish 
Legion, created by the Regency, became in the end a 
national rather than a vassal organization. It was a 
peril rather than a help to the Teuton allies, and it 
turned with the Regency against them both when the 
German situation on the West Front became critical. 

The Baltic Provinces and Lithuania were much less 
anti-German than Poland was. Germany at least 
promised and gave them a sort of political "self-de- 
termination." Economically, Courland, Livonia, and 
Esthonia had closer natural attachments to Germany 
than to Russia. They were in the German Baltic 
zone. But their rapprochement to Germany was half- 
hearted. They were willing to accept German princes 
and grand dukes as rulers. But they gave Germany 
little economic and no military aid. 

Ukrainia owed her independence directly to Germany 
and should have been turned into a useful German ally. 
She had both grain and ' ' cannon fodder ' ' to contribute. 
But here German rapacity again overrode sound mili- 
tary policy. The German satraps set out to strip the 
Ukraine bare of food supplies the moment they were 
installed at Kiev. They plundered and misgoverned, 
quickly displacing the government which signed the 
treaty of Brest-Litovsk and sub'fetituting a dictatorship. 



The Moral Equation 17 

Governor- General Eichhorn was assassinated and Ger- 
many began to do in the Ukraine exactly what she 
had done in Belgium. Whatever power she retained 
rested on the sword. The Ukraine was quickly con- 
verted from a political asset into a political liability. 

In Finland alone the Germans exhibited some gleams 
of political intelligence. They crushed the power of 
the Bolsheviki and restored a conservative govern- 
ment. Finland cheerfully accepted a German alliance 
and could have been converted into a valuable German 
recruiting ground, except for the fact that the alliance 

* 

was concluded too late. Finland was willing to fight 
for Germany between March and August, 191 8. After 
August she scented German disaster and was no longer 
willing to fight. 

If Germany had broken down the Russian front a 
year earlier than she did she would have had it in her 
power to develop Finland, Esthonia, Livonia, Lithu- 
ania, Courland, and the Ukraine into feeders for her 
armies, just as Napoleon had used Poland, Holland, 
Switzerland, Italy, and the German states. But serious 
mistakes of strategy in 1916 and 191 7 and the utter 
lack in her make-up of the empire-building instinct 
fortunately debarred her from exploiting with any 
thoroughness the populations assigned to her mercies 
by the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. 



1 8 The Strategy of the Great War 

World empire is something incorporeal as well as 
physical. It can be attained only by nations which 
add to military power some spiritual ascendancy, some 
sterling moral quality. Germany, as the war was to 
prove again and again, lacked imperial stature. She 
had none of the upbuilding, civilizing power of 
Rome, none of the crusading fervour of Revolu- 
tionary France. In her political and military policy 
she imitated rather the futile cruelty and materialism 
of Spain. 

It was morally impossible for Germany to conquer 
the world, since her cause was bad and her purposes 
were ignoble. One clear-minded truth-teller among 
the Germans saw this from the start. That was Dr. 
Wilhelm Miihlon. He wrote in his Diary on August 
4, 1 9 14: "I cannot too often din it into the ears of the 
Germans that what is lacking in moral superiority 
cannot be replaced by force." And again: "Enthusi- 
asm at the stare is cheap and easily excited. It can 
last only when one fights for a better cause and a higher 
ideal than his opponents, and offers even the opponent 
the opportunity of freedom and progress." 

Germany offered no opponent, even Russia, "the 
opportunity of freedom and progress." She did not 
fight to spread civilization or to benefit humanity. 
She fought to stay the progress of the stars. There- 



The Moral Equation 19 

fore, in the broad sense, she was doomed to defeat 
before she drew the sword. 

But in the narrower sense there was no insuperable 
obstacle to her creating a limited military empire in 
Central Europe had she had the intelligence to make 
her strategy fruitful, getting the best results out of 
her vast initial superiority in military resources. 



CHAPTER II 

THE NUMERICAL EQUATION 

Germany fell a victim to delusions of grandeur. In 
his book, Germany and the Next War, published in 191 1, 
General Bernhardi said that the Germans would be 
obliged in the near future to choose between "world 
power and downfall." 

That phrase summed up the empty im.aginings of 
the pan-German agitation. A rational German mili- 
tary policy in 191 1 or in 1914 would not have contem- 
plated two such alternatives. If Prussia intended to 
engage in another war of conquest, she had only to 
follow the precedents set by Frederick the Great in 
the eighteenth century and by Moltke and Bismarck 
in the nineteenth. Those precedents did not compel 
a gamble between world power and ruin. 

The Prussian state was a slow growth. First, it 

embraced only the petty Mark of Brandenburg. Then 

the Duch}^ of East Prussia was acquired. Pomerania 

was conquered from the Swedes; West Prussia and 

20 



The Numerical Equation 21 

Posen were taken from the Poles; Silesia was grabbed 
from Austria, and a considerable part of Saxony from 
the Saxons. The Rhine province was acquired at the 
Congress of Vienna. 

Such was Prussia's extent after the epoch of Frederick 
the Great. This erratic genius nearly swamped his 
kingdom in the Seven Years' War. His ambition led 
him, with only casual support from England, into a 
struggle with a great European coalition, comprising 
Austria, Saxony, France, Sweden, and Russia. The 
odds against him were far heavier than the odds 
against Germany in 19 14. He was saved by his ex- 
traordinary luck and by his own great military tal- 
ents. But he never aimed at conquering Europe. 
His policy was one of conquest on a modest instalment 
plan. 

Bismarck followed Frederick the Great's example, 
but moved with greater caution. He got Prussia into 
no war in which she would have to fight at a disad- 
vantage. As a consequence he succeeded in annexing 
Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, and Nassau, 
ejecting Austria from the German household, creating 
the modern Prussianized German Empire, and attaching 
Alsace-Lorraine to it as a crownland. 

Victory over France in 1870-71 made Germany the 
first military power in Europe. The alliance with 



22 The Strategy of the Great War 

Austria-Hungary and Italy, which Bismarck concluded, 
secured Germany thereafter against a counter attack. 
For more than forty years she nursed her resources 
with a view to improving her Continental position 
through another successful war. When the time came 
she was perfectly prepared to enlarge her European 
holdings. The chances were all heavily in her favour 
if she could confine the war to Europe. 

If Bismarck had been in power, or if the newer 
generation had been able to produce a statesman of his 
calibre, the war of 1914 would probably have followed 
the course of the wars of 1866 and 1870. Germany 
would have emerged from it with an enlarged "place 
in the sun." She would have been content to digest 
her acquisitions and to prepare patiently for further 
expansion. 

But Bismarck's successors, handicapped by having 
to cope with the instability and restless vainglory of 
William II, had allowed the Triple Alliance to be under- 
mined. Italy had been estranged by a series of diplo- 
matic blunders. By 19 14 she had become merely a 
nominal ally — a neutral, likely in time of trial to be 
converted into an enemy. Yet even with Italy hostile, 
Germany was still equal to fighting another prosperous 
European war. She was fully conscious of her strength. 
She was, in fact, so confident of it that in taking on 



The Numerical Equation 23 

a struggle with France and Russia she was willing to 
attack Belgium and thereby certainly force Great 
Britain from the outset into the circle of her 
enemies. 

Germany was justified in the military sense in her 
contempt of the mere factor of numbers. Those who 
visualized the war merely as a contest between masses 
of population — to be decided on the basis of attrition — 
were misled into proclaiming from the very beginning 
that Germany must lose because she was so manifestly 
weaker in man power. Hilaire Belloc was perhaps the 
most conspicuous champion of the attrition theory — 
a theory which enjoyed much favour with the Allied 
publics in the days of Joffre's enforced policy of "nib- 
bling" on the Western Front. But this theory was 
unsound. There were other factors more important 
than numbers. Russia was soon to prove this. The 
most populous of the major belligerents, she turned out 
to be the most un dependable and was the first to go to 
the wall. 

On the census returns the Central Powers were out- 
numbered in 1 9 14 and 191 5 more than two to one. 
But the census figures were no true index of military 
strength. Taking the population returns of the years 
immediately preceding the war the man-power equation 
stood something like this: 



24 The Strategy of the Great War 

THE CENTRAL POWERS 

Germany 68,000,000 

Austria-Hungary 52,000,000 

Turkey 21,000,000 

Bulgaria (entered the war in 191 5) 4,750,000 

Total 145,750,000 

THE ENTENTE POWERS 

France (without her colonies) 39,600,000 

The United Kingdom 46,000,000 

Canada, Australia, New Zealand, 

and South Africa 20,000,000 

Belgium 7,500,000 

Serbia and Montenegro 3,500,000 

Portugal 6,000,000 

Russia 178,000,000 

Italy (entered the war in 1915) 35,000,000 

Total 335,600,000 

The balance was turned still more heavily against 
Germany by the entrance into the war of Japan (which, 
however, operated only in the Far East and sent no 
troops to Europe) ; by the use which France was able 
to make of her African colonies, from which she drew 
more than five hundred thousand regulars and auxilia- 
ries; and by the forces which Great Britain eventually 
raised in British India, Ceylon, and the other Asiatic 
colonies. By 191 8 India alone had furnished more 
than one million men (mostly auxiliaries). 

But there is a vast difference between paper man 



The Numerical Equation 25 

power and mobilized, trained, and equipped man power. 
In a European war which would be won or lost within 
four years the Central Powers were certain not to be 
outnumbered in the field at any time within the first 
three years. They were certain to have an actual 
preponderance in military strength throughout the 
greater part of the conflict. 

What were the requirements of the Central Powers 
on the various fronts? Germany could mobilize about 
2,000,000 in the first months of the war and 2,000,000 
more by the spring of 19 15. France and Great Britain 
together could mobilize hardly 1,500,000 in the first 
months and put hardly 1,500,000 more in the field by 
the spring of 191 5. 

Austria-Hungary could mobilize 1,500,000 in 191 4 
and have 1,000,000 more available in 191 5. Russia 
had an inexhaustible man power ; but she could hardly 
hope at any time to arm, equip, and maintain in the 
fighting lines more than 3,500,000 men. Turkey could 
be counted on to hold her own pretty well for a couple 
of years against the Russians in Armenia and the Brit- 
ish in Mesopotamia and Palestine, unless the Allies 
could carry the Dardanelles by a surprise attack. 

The full strength of the three major Central Powers 
was available in the earlier stages of the war. But 
Great Britain, which lacked even the rudiments of a 



26 The Strategy of the Great War 

• 

military system, could not develop her land strength 
before the middle of 191 6, or make any highly effective 
use of it until the middle of 191 7. But by the middle 
of 191 6 the Russian collapse had already begun. 

Germany needed on the West Front in 1914 about 
1,500,000 men and on the East Front about 500,000. 
Russia's unexpected victories in Galicia increased the 
German burden in the East, where Austria-Hungary 
proved unequal to the task assigned her. But in 1915 
Germany had man power enough to defend her lines in 
France and Belgium and to go East, relieve Galicia, 
conquer Poland and Courland, invade Lithuania and 
Russia proper, and overrun Serbia, Montenegro, and 
Albania. She was able to crush Russia and at the same 
time to create an ample strategical reserve — much of 
which was to be foolishly wasted in 1916 at Verdun. 

Even the entrance of Italy into the war in May, 
191 5, did not challenge German superiority or wrest 
the offensive from the German High Command. Italy 
spent a year and a half trying to make an impres- 
sion on the Austrian defences in the Alps and behind 
the Isonzo. Before the Italian attack could become 
threatening the Russians bad been flung back to the 
line of the Dvina River and the Pripet Marshes, and 
Austria-Hungary could safely transfer her best troops 
to the Italian front. 



The Numerical Equation 2^ 

The sufficiency of German (Central Allied) numbers 
for a strictly European war is best attested by the 
fact that, except in Turkey, the Central Powers were 
able to maintain the offensive almost uninterruptedly 
throughout the struggle. The German General Staff 
imposed its strategy on the Entente, It was not until 
July, 1 91 8, when American man power became avail- 
able, that the offensive passed definitely and irrevocably 
into Allied hands. 

The attrition theory of 1914 and 191 5 therefore 
broke down absolutely, in so far as it was based on 
the discrepancy in numbers between the Central States 
and the original members of the Entente. Mere num- 
bers are not equivalent to military strength. The two- 
to-one advantage of the Entente in population was 
offset by the obstacles in the way of a conversion of 
latent war power into military energy. Time was 
one of these obstacles. Others were an unfavourable 
geographical position, deficiency in military training 
and equipment, greater industrial unpreparedness for 
war, and lack of unified leadership. All these weighed 
heavily against the Entente, making its impressive nu- 
merical preponderance only a tantalizing and elusive as- 
set. The superior masses at the disposition of the Allied 
governments could not hope to wear down the Teuton 
armies so long as the latter enjoyed the enormous ad- 



28 The Strategy of the Great War 

vantages (in addition to actual equality on the fighting 
lines) of better equipment, heavier guns, interior lines 
of communication, unified strategy, and the freedom of 
action which accompanies possession of the offensive. 

Parallels in military history are often highly mis- 
leading, because they ignore vital changes in military 
conditions. Theoretically the situation of the Central 
Powers may have seemed in 1914, 1915, and 191 6 al- 
most as hopeless as the situation of Prussia during the 
Seven Years' War. The Central States were beleaguered 
as Prussia was. France, Great Britain, Italy, and 
Russia were at first glance as overpowering a hostile 
combination as France, Saxony, Austria, and Russia, 
had been. But it was, in fact, nothing like so over- 
powering, as events were to prove. Frederick the 
Great owed his salvation to a change of sovereigns in 
Russia, Peter III reversing the policy of the Empress 
Elizabeth and going over to the side of Prussia. 

But in this war Russia, a colossus in extent and num- 
bers compared to what she was in 1762, was actually 
defeated in the field before she deserted the Entente 
coalition. Cut off from her allies and limited in indus- 
trial resources, she could not stand the killing pace of 
modem war. She had yielded in 1904-05 to the nu- 
merically inferior strength of Japan. Now she yielded 
to the numerically inferior strength of Germany. 



The Numerical Equation 29 

In Frederick the Great's time a soldier was a soldier. 
The Russians were not far below the Prussians or the 
French in fighting and staying power. They stood up 
against Napoleon in many battles. They defeated him 
at Eylau. The weapons of that day put all armies 
more or less on an equality, if courage and endurance 
were equal. In the smaller armies of the eighteenth 
century and the first half of the nineteenth century 
there was far more evenness of quality. Under uni- 
versal service the military defects of the backward 
nations became accentuated. In his book A Nation 
Trained in Arms or a Militia? published in 1918, Lieu- 
tenant-General Baron Freytag-Loringhoven, Deputy 
Chief of the German General Staff, who had himself 
served when a young man in the Russian army, says 
very justly : 

Far too many of the conditions which at one time 
contributed to the efficiency of the Russian troops 
ceased to exist after the middle of the nineteenth 
century; they could not, indeed, any longer exist. 

In modem war, too, equipment has become a domi- 
nant factor. War is largely a contest in mechanical 
efficiency. In such a contest Russia was outclassed 
from the start. Relatively, she was more outclassed 
than Turkey. For from the autumn of 191 5 on Ger- 
man military supplies could move freely into Turkey, 



30 The Strategy of the Great War 

while the supplies which the Allies could furnish Russia 
were inadequate to prevent the great Russian retreat 
of the summer of 191 5, which was the beginning of 
Russia's downfall. 

Short interior lines united the German Western and 
Eastern fronts. The Prussian railway system had 
been specially constructed to facilitate transfers from 
one front to the other. It is but four hundred miles 
from the Rhine to the Vistula, and only the troops 
themselves had to be shifted, since there were ample 
artillery and supply depots behind the two fighting 
areas. 

France and Great Britain, on the other hand, had 
only the most meagre communications with Russia. 
They were barred by the Dardanelles forts from the 
warm water route to the Black Sea ports. They could 
not bring out food supplies, of which Southern Russia 
had a surplus, or send in munitions and heavy guns, 
which the Russian armies lacked. The only open 
paths by sea were to Kola and Archangel, or to Vladi- 
vostok. But Russia's railroad system from the Arctic 
ports or from the Pacific was utterly inadequate to 
handle the supply cargoes landed by Allied or neutral 
ships. Russia could last as a real military factor only 
until her own resources failed. And both her resources 
and her morale were failing from the middle of 191 5 on. 



The Numerical Equation 31 

Germany entered the war immensely better supplied 
with heavy artillery than France was. It took France 
nearly two years to overcome the handicap. Great 
Britain was totally unsupplied at the start. She could 
not expect to make up her deficiencies within three 
years. Russia never made hers up. 

When Mackensen launched his great drive on the 
Dunajec in May, 191 5, his superiority in artillery over 
the Russians was stupendous. His guns smothered 
the Russian fire. The march from the Dunajec to 
Volhynia was an artillerists' parade. The infantry 
merely had to seize the enemy positions which the 
German big guns had made untenable. In war like 
this numbers on the Russian side became an incon- 
sequential factor. Numbers were, in fact, at times only 
a hindrance to the Russian retreat. So long as the 
German artillery kept advancing the Russian armies 
had to keep on retiring. 

The same thing happened later in the year in Serbia. 
Alexander F. L. Roda-Roda, a brilliant Viennese liter- 
ary man and war correspondent, wrote a description 
of the Serbian campaign which vividly and humorously 
described this new aspect of war. Campaigning was 
conducted on stop-watch, union-labour principles. The 
artillery worked every morning from eight o'clock 
until noon. The supporting infantry worked from 



32 The Strategy of the Great War 

noon until 4 p.m. Then the batteries were hauled 
forward to the demolished Serbian positions, which 
the infantry had occupied. 

This mechanical advance continued for weeks 
through the Serbian mountains. The batteries were 
out of range of the enemy guns. They went through 
their daily practice undisturbed. Even the infantry 
rarely saw a Serbian soldier. 

There is an element of exaggeration in this descrip- 
tion. But it throws an interesting sidelight on the 
superiority in the mechanical appliances of modern 
war which Germany possessed — especially against 
opponents on the Eastern Front — and which made her 
campaigns in Galicia, Poland, and Serbia in 191 5 and 
her campaign in Rumania in 1916 seem more or less 
like a Kriegspiel, with the uncertainties of war 
eliminated. 

In the winter of 1 914-15 Field Marshal Hindenburg, 
then just risen to fame, said of the Russians that they 
fought well in trenches, thus maintaining the defensive 
traditions of the Russian armies. But he predicted 
their defeat because they were inferior to the Germans 
in education and moral discipline, and because victory 
must go to the combatant with the "stronger nerves." 
This was only another way of saying that the Russians 
would be unable to stand up against the mechanical 



The Numerical Equation 33 

superiority of the Germans. Men get discouraged 
fighting against machinery. Had the Russians had 
the better technical equipment the weakness in 
"nerves" would have been all on the Teuton side. In 
the last half of 191 8, in fact, Germany showed the 
white feather on the Western Front, after less punish- 
ment than the Russian armies had suffered in 191 5 in 
the retreat from the Dunajec. 

Germany was the first belligerent to use the big 
Skoda and Krupp type of siege howitzer which bat- 
tered down the forts of Liege, Namur, and Antwerp. 
She first produced the long range weapons of the sort 
which bombarded Dunkirk and Paris. She was the 
first to employ high explosive shells and to develop 
the massed artillery offensive. She was the inventor of 
the flame thrower, of the poison gas wave, and poison 
gas shell. Armed with these instruments of "fright- 
fulness" she could well afford to discount Allied pre- 
ponderance in crude man power. 

The Central States were not long in achieving unity 
of command. Austria-Hungary was quickly cured 
of all ambition for co-belligerency with Germany. 
Berlin gave Vienna plenty of rope in the early months 
of the war. It was a wise policy. Thereafter the Aus- 
trians meekly took orders from the German General 
Staff. 



34 The Strategy of the Great War 

The Austro-Hungarians expected to play a great 
r61e on the Eastern Front. Germany had decided in 
August, 1 9 14, to throw almost her entire mobilized 
strength into France. She left less than five hundred 
thousand men in East Prussia — ^merely second line 
material. They were to hold off a Russian invasion 
from Northern Poland while the Austro-Hungarians 
took the offensive in Southern Poland, striking for 
Lublin and trying to isolate Warsaw. 

It was a bold conception. It failed completely, how- 
ever, because both Vienna and Berlin had counted on 
a tardy Russian mobilization. 

An Austro-Hungarian army under Dankl moved 
north-east from the Vistula into Poland. It won a 
victory at Krasnik and advanced confidently toward 
Lublin. Had it reached this town the Russians would 
have been obliged to abandon the line of the Vistula 
from Warsaw south to Ivangorod, as they had to 
abandon it a year later when Mackensen followed in 
Dankl 's footsteps. 

Dankl was supported on his right by Auffenberg, 
and the latter 's right was extended in a curve to cover 
Lemberg. But the Russian mobilization on the line 
of Brest-Litovsk had been effected with great rapidity. 
Russian armies appeared from the north-east, east, and 
south-east, executing a concentric movement on Lem- 



The Numerical Equation 35 

berg. The Austro-Hungarian forces south of the city 
were driven back and Auffenberg was badly beaten 
on the sector north of it, at Rawa-Russka. The con- 
nection between Auffenberg and Dankl was broken 
and the Austro-Hungarian armies were chased back 
in disorder beyond the San and the Carpathians. 

It was a bitter humiHation to the Austrian General 
Staff, but a wholesome one. From the winter of 1914- 
15 on the Austrian military establishment was virtu- 
ally absorbed into the German. The Austrians fought 
no more offensives of their own, although Germany 
later turned over to them the defence of Trieste and 
the Trentino. All the strategy of the Central Powers 
was shaped absolutely in Berlin, and this unity of 
direction was worth many army corps. 

The original Entente Powers never achieved unified 
military control. With two wholly detached fronts, 
a close co-ordination of military effort was impossible. 
Russia had to go her own way. Later Italy went her 
own way. The British and Russians never co-operated 
in Asiatic Turkey. 

On the Western Front proper the British and the 
French fought side by side. France was the natural 
leader. But the increasing importance of the British 
military contribution made it exceedingly difficult for 
Great Britain to forego independence of command. 



36 The Strategy of the Great War 

National pride and sensitiveness stood in the way of 
military efficiency. 

The Italian disaster at Caporetto, in the fall of 191 7, 
and the British disaster before St. Quentin, in the 
spring of 1918, were particularly striking demonstra- 
tions of the cost of disunity of leadership. But even 
then unity would hardly have been accomplished except 
for the intervention of the United States. The Ameri- 
can command had no pride of opinion. American 
influence in Allied councils, added to the saving com- 
mon sense of Premier Lloyd George, finally forced 
Foch's selection as generalissimo. That was one of 
America's greatest contributions to Allied victory. 
It made a real Allied offensive possible for the first 
time since August, 19 14. 

Germany really lost the war in the winter of 191 6-1 7, 
when she hounded the United States out of neutrality 
and into belligerency. But the Allies did not put 
themselves in a position to win the war until they 
decided to fight as a unit, and not separately. 

Looking back to the beginnings of the war, the cal- 
culations as to its outcome based on population and 
the attrition theory seem more than ever grotesque. 
In a contest between the original groups of belligerents 
(including Italy) numbers would not have won. It is 
clear now that Germany failed only because she car- 



The Numerical Equation 37 

ried the war to America. Otherwise she had sufficient 
resources and enjoyed enough mihtary advantages to 
win at least a partial victory. And even a draw would 
have been a victory for her, so long as she retained 
control of that Middle Europe which she had erected 
out of the territory of Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and 
Turkey. 

Germany had the troops, artillery, munitions, techni- 
cal appliances, and organization to win with. She had 
competent generals of division and generals of armies. 
But she was woefully lacking in genuine political and 
military leaders. 

Maximilian Harden said of William K that he was 
only a "showman." His cheap theatrical quality was 
not unknown to the men who surrounded him and in 
a measure controlled him. But his faults were their 
faults also. Neither in the group of statesmen and 
diplomats nor in the group of military men into 
whose hands the destinies of Germany fell after war 
was declared was there one figure of first-class ability. 
German public life had become sterile. The Imperial 
Chancellors, from Bethmann-Hollweg to Maximilian of 
Baden, were mere place holders, without authority, 
convictions, or courage. They were the tools of the 
military group. Prince Biilow was the only civilian 
in Germany fit to be compared with the Bismarckian 



38 The Strategy of the Great War 

generation. And neither the Emperor nor the military 
autocrats wanted to make use of his at least respectable 
abilities. 

In the mxilitary group Tirpitz and Ludendorff stood 
out — both narrow, domineering, parochial-minded, 
typical of all that was worst temperamentally and 
intellectually in modem Germany. These two made 
a wreck of German military policy. Their leadership 
offset the indubitable strategic advantages which 
Germany possessed. By changing the character of 
the war they made it impossible for Germany to end 
it without unexampled disaster. They took seriously 
the Bernhardi alternative of "world power or down- 
fall." And they sought world power in so senseless 
a manner as to make downfall inevitable. 

In the two or three decades before 1914 the German 
mind had become corroded with chauvinism. Modesty, 
moderation, self -distrust had become less than ever Ger- 
man characteristics. Imitating the Kaiser, all Germans 
of light and leading assumed a tone of boastfulness and 
self-glorification. Says Dr. Miihlon: 

At home the social and political leaders acted 
as though the German was at the forefront the 
world over and was its ideal of the coming man, 
since his culture, his power, his principles, his aims 
were higher and broader than those of all other 
peoples. 



The Numerical Equation 39 

All Germans who were in a position to influence the 
policy of the government thought alike. And under 
these leaders, puffed with egomania, the German 
people rushed down a precipice into the sea. Germany 
was not destroyed by the weight of outside numbers. 
She was destroyed by madness within. She had no- 
thing to fear from Russia's 175,000,000 moujiks. Her 
star set when she deliberately expanded a European war 
into a world war, thereby neutralizing and nullifying 
the enormous military advantages which would have 
enabled her to break down the original European coali- 
tion against her and might have enabled her to create 
a Teutonized empire stretching from Berlin to Badgad, 
from Hamburg to Herat. 



CHAPTER III 
Germany's long r.un of luck 

The Goddess of Fortune was overgenerous to the 
Germans. They took her gifts arrogantly. They 
had none of the old Greek dread of her uninterrupted 
favour. They presumed on their good luck as no other 
nation has ever done. But Fortune had her revenge. 
By the time she was ready to turn her face away she 
had killed the Germans with overkindness. 

Schiller wrote a famous short poem, entitled The 
Ring of Polykrates. All Germany has known the work 
for more than a century. But modern Germany had 
lost the sense of the words. Schiller retold the Greek 
legend of a king of Samos, whose good fortune was 
phenomenal. His guest, an exiled king of Egypt, be- 
came alarmed about this ominous run of luck, and 
advised Polykrates to throw into the sea the thing he 
valued most in his whole kingdom. Polykrates sacri- 
ficed his favourite ring. Next day a fisherman brought 

a fish to the palace as a present, and when the cook 

40 



Germany's Long Run of Luck 41 

cut it open the king's ring appeared. The former 
Egyptian monarch took his leave in haste, exclaiming: 

Die Gotter wollen dein Verderhen. 
Fort eiV ich, nicht mil dir zu sterhen. 

[The gods are bent on your destruction. 
I hurry away, so as not to die with you.] 

Germany was a spoiled child of fortune during the 
first two and a half years of the war. But she never 
sought to placate the fates. She never made a single sac- 
rifice to superstition or prudence. The U-boat was her 
ring of Polykrates. She would not abate its illegal and 
monstrous use. And that decision brought her to ruin. 

It is worth while recalling the many good turns 
by which Germany benefited. Her first extraordinary 
piece of luck was the escape to Constantinople of the 
Goeben and the Breslau. These two warships were 
trapped in the Mediterranean. They were obliged to 
go to Messina to coal. They should have been hemmed 
in from the south and east and driven toward Gibraltar. 
But steaming out of Messina they made for the Dar- 
danelles, evading the Allied squadrons lying in wait 
for them. Their arrival at Constantinople assured 
Turkey's accession to the Central Alliance. They 
were nominally transferred to the Young Turk govern- 
ment. But the Young Turk leaders, working hand 



42 The Strategy of the Great War 

in glove with the German Ambassador, Baron Wangen- 
heim, used the big battle-cruiser Goeben to terrorize 
the population of the Turkish capital and also to con- 
duct the raid on the northern Black Sea ports, which 
put Turkey dramatically into the war through an overt 
act against Russia. 

If the Goeben and Breslau had been captured — or 
even the Goeben alone — Turkey's participation might 
have been delayed — possibly prevented. The Allied 
admiralties had calculated that the Goeben and the 
Breslau would not run for the Dardanelles, since the 
Treaty of Paris, of 1856, and the Treaty of London, of 
1871, both provided that warships should not use the 
straits except by special permission of the Sultan, which 
could be granted only in time of peace. When the 
Allied commanders found that the two German war 
vessels had entered the straits, a true appreciation of 
the emergency would have led them to force that bar- 
rier themselves. It was one of the critical moments of 
the war. But, as was to be the case for the next three 
years with Allied policy in the Near East, military 
advantage was sacrificed to timidity, irresolution, and 
foolish preconceptions. 

In his book. Ambassador Morgenthau' s Story, the ob- 
servant American envoy to Constantinople says of 
the escape of the Goeben and the Breslau: 



Germany's Long Run of Luck 43 

I have often speculated on what would have 
happened if the English battle-cruisers which pur- 
sued the Breslau and the Goehen up to the mouth of 
the Dardanelles had not been too gentlemanly to vio- 
late international law. Suppose they had entered 
the straits, attacked the German cruisers in the 
Marmora, and sunk them. They could have done 
this, and, knowing all that we know now, such an 
action would have been justified. Not improbably 
the destruction would have kept Turkey out of the 
war. For the arrival of these cruisers made it inevi- 
table that Turkey, when the proper time came, should 
join forces with Germany. With them the Turkish 
navy became stronger than the Russian Black Sea 
fleet, and thus made it certain that Russia could 
make no attack on Constantinople. 

Germany in the first weeks of the war thus was able 
to close definitely to the Allies the warm water route 
to Russia. The preservation of communications with 
Russia was the primary strategic object of the Entente. 
Could they keep Turkey neutral or eventually buy, 
cajole, or force her into opening the Dardanelles, Great 
Britain, France, and Russia could reasonably expect to 
defeat Germany and Austria-Hungary without aid from 
Italy or the United States. 

But, like a pure windfall, Constantinople dropped 
early in August, 191 4, into German hands. In the 
Sea of Marmora the two fugitive German cruisers 
became of more value to Germany than all the rest 



44 The Strategy of the Great War 

of Germany's high seas fleet. They alone of all 
Tirpitz's surface navy were to prove themselves a 
profitable military investment. 

To the Allies, in 191 4, 1915, and 1916, possession of 
Constantinople would have more than offset the loss of 
territory they had suffered in Belgium and Northern 
France. The Entente strategists could not see this 
at first, and never saw it clearly enough. They re- 
frained from entering the straits in 191 4. The next 
year they made a half-hearted effort to enter them and 
failed ingloriously, when, with a little better manage- 
ment, success was in sight. Germany held her breath 
while the Dardanelles forts were attacked by the Allied 
fleets in February and March, 191 5. But again fortune 
was more than liberal to the Germans. The Gallipoli 
campaign went down to history as a tragic Allied dis- 
aster. After that Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, 
Serbia was conquered, and a free corridor was opened 
through the Balkans from Berlin to Constantinople. 
Russia's isolation, except on the Arctic Ocean side 
and through far-off Vladivostok, was clinched and 
Russia's exhaustion as a military power was assured. 

Everywhere in the Near East events continued to 
play steadily into Germany's hand. Sir Edward Grey 
had been the ruling spirit in the London conferences 
which had tried to straighten out affairs in the Balkans 



Germany's Long Run of Luck 45 

after the first Balkan War. The net result of these 
negotiations had. been to create the burlesque state of 
Albania and put William of Wied, a burlesque monarch, 
on its throne. They had also forced the second Balkan 
War, which ended with Bulgaria's collapse and the 
partition of Bucharest. 

Sir Edward Grey, an amiable pacifist and compro- 
miser, was completely out of touch with the realities 
of Balkan politics. He did not understand the fierce 
passions, jealousies, and hatreds of the Balkan peoples. 
He tried to deal with Ferdinand of Bulgaria as if 
that worthy were, as he claimed to be, a "good 
European." 

Greece was an ally of Serbia, the two countries having 
just finished a successful war against Turkey and a 
successful war against Bulgaria. Venizelos, the great- 
est of the statesmen of modern Greece, was in power 
at Athens. The Allies wanted to enlist Greece in the 
Dardanelles enterprise and offered her liberal compensa- 
tions. Venizelos was an ardent friend of the Entente. 
But when it came to realizing Greek aid Allied diplo- 
macy fell between the two stools of Greek ambitions 
and Italian ambitions. It also encountered, without 
understanding it, the veiled hostility of King Con- 
stantine — a pro-German at heart, who was to develop 
more and more into a malignant enemy of the Entente 



46 The Strategy of the Great War 

and as faithful a tool of Berlin as was his former 
arch-enemy, the Czar of the Bulgars. 

It is a curious circumstance that the Allies were to 
suffer enormously in Greece as well as in Russia from 
distaff politics. Constantine's policy was shaped by 
his wife's relationship to the German Kaiser. She 
was the Kaiser's sister. So Constantine considered 
himself a Hohenzollern by marriage. In that role 
he did not scruple to sacrifice the interests of Greece 
on the family altar. 

The Empress of Russia was a Hessian princess, and 
her great influence in the court at Petrograd kept alive 
a pro-German cabal, which apparently remained 
in treasonable communication with Berlin, betrayed 
military secrets, and obstructed the delivery of supplies 
to the armies. In 1916, Stiirmer, the Russian Prime 
Minister, helped to manoeuvre Rumania into declaring 
war and then did what he could covertly to abandon 
her to the Germans. 

Both Constantine and the Empress paid a tardy 
penalty for their perfidy. But their services to the 
German cause, while they lasted, were invaluable. 
They differed from Ferdinand's and Enver Pasha's 
only in that they were not paid for out of the great 
German corruption fund. Allied diplomacy could 
never have put the Czarina under bonds for good be- 



Germany's Long Run of Luck 47 

haviour. But it could have ousted Constantine long 
before it did, because Greece was a ward of France, 
Great Britain, and Russia. Greece should have been 
released long before 191 7 for active service with the 
Entente, with whose interests those of the Greek people 
were thoroughly in harmony. 

Bulgaria, the loser in the second Balkan War, still 
bitter and vengeful, was the natural ally of Germany 
and Austria-Hungary. But Sir Edward Grey and 
Delcasse dealt with her as if a passionless and enlight- 
ened self-interest could convert her into a friend and 
associate. Many powerful British influences were pro- 
Bulgar, and believed that Bulgaria, Serbia, Rumania, 
and Greece might be brought to lie down together in 
concord by means of a few sleight-of-hand territorial 
readjustments. 

Sir Edward Grey was dispassionate enough to ask 
both Serbia and Greece to surrender portions of their 
tenitory to the Bulgars. Serbia was outraged by this 
suggestion. So was Greece, although Venizelos mag- 
nanimously agreed to recommend the sacrifice. But 
nothing came of these ill-conceived moves, except to 
put into Constantine 's hands a weapon with which 
to demolish Venizelos 's prestige. 

Bulgaria should have been forced to declare her 
attitude early in 1 9 1 5 . She was not ready for war then ; 



48 The Strategy of the Great War 

nor was Germany ready to invade Serbia. The Rus- 
sian armies were still astride the Carpathians. But 
Ferdinand cleverly hoodwinked the Allied diplomats. 
Mackensen and Hindenburg spent the spring and sum- 
mer driving the Russians out of Galicia and Poland. 
In the fall, when Ferdinand had lifted the mask and 
Serbia was ready to be crushed, the Allies could onl}^ 
look on impotently. 

The Teuton programme of conquest developed without 
a hitch, so far as the Eastern Front was concerned. 
There was something uncann}" in the precision with 
which it unfolded. Fortune smiled everywhere on 
German plans, while the Allies seemed to touch nothing 
except to bungle it. 

In the West, too, the Germans profited dispropor- 
tionately from what might be called the accidental 
developments of the military situation. France had 
prepared a strong defence of her eastern frontier. But 
the eastern frontier could be turned by an enemy 
coming through Belgium. 

The French General Staff had ample warning of 
Germany's purpose to violate Belgian neutrality. 
General Bemhardi in Germany and the Next War, pub- 
lished in 191 1, had spoken of a flank movement across 
Belgium as a matter of course. Possibly the French 
High Command thought that this was merely a bluff 



Germany's Long Run of Luck 49 

to distract French attention from the defence of the 
Alsace-Lorraine and Luxemburg front. 

At any rate, Joffre let the defence of the northern 
frontier go by the board, and the German armies found 
an easy path up the valley of the Meuse and across the 
plain of Northern France as far as the outskirts of 
Paris. Thus they were enabled to fight the first great 
battle of the war far in the rear of the northern frontier 
forts. South of the Marne and directly east of Paris, 
they were well behind even the secondary French 
defences, like the line of La Fere-Laon-Rheims. They 
had wrested from the French that advantage of posi- 
tion which the latter had counted on to neutralize the 
German advantage in numbers. 

The Germans committed an international crime, 
gravely damaging to them in the larger moral aspect, 
when they violated Belgian neutrality. That crime 
made Germany an outlaw in the world and turned all 
neutral sympathy away from her. But the immediate 
results of the eruption through Belgium were of enor- 
mous military value. The German armies obtained 
a lodgment on French soil at very little cost. They 
secured the "elbow room" which they needed and 
which they would have lacked if they had based their 
offensive on Metz. They were able to reap at once 
the advantages of a war of movement, in which the 



50 The Strategy of the Great War 

weight of their somewhat superior numbers and com- 
pleter mechanical equipment had the best chance to 
make itself felt. 

The German High Command lost the first battle 
of the Mame through overconfidence. I'he younger 
Moltke and all his lieutenants undervalued both the 
French army and Joffre's leadership. They thought 
they were marching to another Sedan. Instead they 
walked heedlessly into an ambush. The German 
military temperament disclosed its weaknesses at the 
Mame, just as it was to disclose them at every other 
real crisis of the war. Complacency at Grand Head- 
quarters swiftly nullified the effect of the really 
brilliant initial successes of the 191 4 campaign. 

Germany might not have been able to crush France 
in September, 1914. It is not clear that she would 
ever have been able to crush France, even with the 
wisest use of her superior resources. But with a more 
alert and wary leadership she might easily have gath- 
ered in the first months of the war the full fruits of her 
almost unopposed march to Paris. She might have com- 
pelled Jofire to abandon the French capital, as she had 
already compelled the Belgians to evacuate Brussels. 

At the First Marne Germany threw away the hope 
of an imposing victory on the West Front. Circum- 
stances now compelled her to turn for victory to the 



Germany's Long Run of Luck 51 

East — her natural field of conquest. She had success- 
fully begun and then botched her campaign in the 
West under conditions which were extremely favourable 
to the offensive. The Allied armies were painfully 
short of machine guns and heavy artillery. The power 
of the defensive had been steadily increasing with the 
perfection of small arms and field guns. But the de- 
fensive had not yet completely found itself. The big 
Skoda and Krupp howitzers had relegated the old- 
fashioned fortress to the scrap-heap. Liege, Namur, 
and Antwerp fell with incredible rapidity. Almost 
overnight, elaborate fortifications became liabilities, 
instead of assets. Military opinion was at sea, finding 
many of its preconceptions of the value of the defensive 
demolished. 

The Mame campaign was thus fought along the old 
lines of open warfare. It was decided as the Napoleonic 
campaigns or the elder Moltke's campaigns were de- 
cided — by manoeuvring and by field operations without 
shelter. The Marne campaign was, in a sense, a mili- 
tary anachronism. It was inevitable that modem 
armies should seek to protect themselves. If fixed 
fortifications above ground had become valueless the 
troops would have to dig in in the open, wherever 
they were. So the trench system, with all its elabora- 
tions, was evolved. 



52 The Strategy of the Great War 

This revolution in field tactics was to have the effect 
of immobilizing war on the West Front for the next 
three years. But the Germans were to benefit from 
this immobilization much more largely than the Allies. 
The change came just as the Germans were ready to 
drop the offensive in the West and to go east to recover 
the territory which Austria-Hungary had lost to the 
Russians. 

The deadlock of trench warfare set in about Decem- 
ber, 1914. In the West, where the strength of the 
combatants was becoming more and more equalized, 
the defensive gained enormously in power over the 
offensive. Open warfare was abolished and great 
battles were fought, with losses running into the tens 
of thousands, in which the gains of territory were 
measured not in miles, but in hundreds of yards. 

The coming of trench warfare greatly strengthened 
the German grip on France. Having failed to take 
Paris in September and the Channel ports in October 
and November, the German High Command settled 
down to a defensive which lasted, except for the Verdun 
episode, until March, 1918. It was the obvious policy 
of the Germans to hold fast in the West while solidify- 
ing their power in the East. They could do this with 
a minimum expenditure of effort in France and Bel- 
gium, because of the vast defence systems which they 



Germany's Long Run of Luck 53 

constructed — mostly through the enforced labour of 
prisoners. Against these great barriers the French 
and British armies beat for three years without making 
anything like a serious breach in them. It was "nib- 
bling" on a grand scale. But the cost was always 
out of proportion to the results. The Germans had 
the man power, the artillery, the machine guns, and 
the strategic reserves to defend their Western lines, 
and at the same time they had sufficient strength to 
overrun Galicia, Poland, Courland, Bukowina, Serbia, 
Montenegro, Albania, and Rumania and to deal the 
finishing blow to the toppling Russian giant. 
■ There could be no genuine deadlock on the Eastern 
Front. The necessary solidity on the part of the de- 
fence was lacking on that side. The enormously supe- 
rior German artillery could breach the enemy lines at 
any point and then restore relatively open warfare. 
The heaviest Allied artillery concentrations in France 
and Belgium made only dents here and there in the 
German defences. But, relying chiefly on their heavy 
guns, the Germans could clear hostile territory in the 
East with almost as much ease as in the days before 
the intervention of rigid positional warfare. 

In still another important development of modem 
war fortune was kind to the Germans. They had 
built great hopes on the Zeppelin. It disappointed 



54 The Strategy of the Great War 

them; for the dirigible as a weapon of offence was one 
of the absolute failures of the war. But the U-boat 
surpassed all expectations. It was exploited to an 
extent which revolutionized warfare at sea. It was 
one of the greatest military "finds" of the war, out- 
classing in effectiveness the Skoda howitzer and the 
fifty-mile super-cannon, and almost rivalling in de- 
structiveness the bombing airplane. 

Within a week from the outbreak of hostilities the 
German navy was practically driven from the ocean. 
The high sea fleet was interned at the German naval 
bases, issuing infrequently on raids and only twice 
venturing a real engagement with the British. The 
Asiatic squadron remained at large in the Pacific for 
several months, defeating an inferior British squadron 
off the Chilean coast, and subsequently, after entering 
the South Atlantic, being itself destroyed by a superior 
British squadron off the Falkland Islands. A few 
remaining light cruisers, including the famous Emden, 
were gradually rounded up in the ends of the earth. 

German sea power seemed to have vanished. But 
what the German cruiser could no longer do on the 
surface of the waters the U-boat quickly learned to do 
under them. Before the war the U-boat was merely 
a promising experiment. Few naval authorities had 
much faith in its future. It was constructed primarily 



Germany's Long Run of Luck 55 

as an engine of coast defence, supplementing mines 
and land batteries. The cruising radius of most of 
the submarines built before 1914 was small, and the 
speed attained, either on the surface or under it, was 
so low that the U-boat seemed condemned to operate 
within a narrow range along the coasts which it protected. 

Admiral Sir Percy Scott was the only British expert 
with imagination enough to realize the great offensive 
power bottled up in the submarine. Just before the 
war he wrote some articles in the London Times in 
which he predicted that if war came battleships would 
have to be locked up in harbours behind booms to pre- 
vent their being torpedoed by U-boats. He believed 
that the spirit of invention, which is mothered by 
necessity, would, under war conditions, soon make 
the submarine seaworthy and enormously dangerous, 
just as the Monitor and the ironclad Merrimac sprang 
suddenly into being in the American Civil War. 

Sir Percy Scott was laughed at by the naval bureau- 
crats. But he was right. Within two or three years 
he saw the British battleships shepherded in bays of 
refuge about the Northern Scottish Islands, whence 
they issued only under the closest guard of sweepers 
and destroyers. But in his wildest speculations he 
had never prophesied the development of a U-boat 
which should carry 6-inch guns for surface fighting 



56 The Strategy of the Great War 

purposes and should not only patrol the British Isles 
and the coasts of France and Spain but should cross 
and recross the Atlantic ^^'ith ease. That a submarine 
with a base at Kiel or Wilhelmshaven should sink 
merchant ships off Bamegat Bay or the Virginia Capes 
seemed as incredible in 19 14 as that German coast 
guns should bombard Edinburgh or London. 

Germany, therefore, found herself possessed in the 
U-boat of more than an equivalent in offensive sea 
power for what she had lost in her marooned surface 
na\y. Until experience began to furnish the enemy 
surface fleets \\ath an adequate defence the submarine 
made life miserable for them. The appearance of a 
single U-boat in the ^^gean Sea in the summer of 191 5 
compelled the withdrawal of the Allied warships which 
were co-operating in the Gallipoli campaign. From 
1915 to 1918 Allied operations in the Near East were 
greatly hampered by the submarine threat. French 
and British military effort was thereby localized to 
Belgium and France, where Germany needed most 
to localize it. The incidental warfare on Allied ship- 
ping was also a grave strain on Allied commerce and 
transportation. 

Germany could have conformed her U-boat activi- 
ties to the accepted rules of warfare at sea and still 
have derived an immense advantage from them. She 



Germany's Long Run of Luck 57 

did, in fact, live up, pretty closely, to the international 
code in her campaign of 1918 against shipping on the 
American coast. But the spirit of excess and fright- 
fulness was in her blood. Because Great Britain set 
up a cruiser cordon blockade, which infringed on exist- 
ing neutral property rights, Germany tried to set up 
a "submarine blockade," which abolished the safe- 
guards hitherto thrown about the lives of neutrals and 
non-combatants. 

Yet even in this misguided venture fortune was still 
constant to the Kaiser. The sinking of the Lusitania 
on May 7, 191 5, ought to have led promptly to war 
with the United States. The American Government 
had stated its position in the note of warning sent to 
Berlin on February 12, 191 5. But when the Kaiser 
did what he had been told he would be held to "strict 
accountability" for doing and refused to disavow his 
crime, the United States Government not only avoided 
declaring war, but ostentatiously refused to prepare 
for war. A gigantic blunder in German military policy 
brought no evil consequences. On the contrary, it 
helped Germany to intimidate the other maritime 
neutrals; for Holland, Spain, and the Scandinavian 
states could not be expected to break with Berlin on 
an issue which had not caused a severance of relations 
between Berlin and Washington. 



58 The Strategy of the Great War 

Iniquity, so long as it was German iniquity, seemed to 
wax and prosper. For two years American complacency 
and unpreparedness continued. We were "kept out of 
war." And we should probably have been "kept out of 
war" to the end if German folly, aggravated by too easy 
prosperity, had not finally resolved to treat the United 
States as a practically negligible military quantity. 

This was the monumental blunder of German strat- 
egy. The United States was, in fact, capable of being 
converted within a short time into the most powerful 
military nation in the world. But the infatuated 
German High Command couldn't see that. A com- 
petent general staff should have known that the unre- 
stricted submarine campaign was, from the military 
point of view, only a piece of window dressing. It 
could not bring victory. And dragging the United 
States by the ears into the war was bound to make 
victory for Germany impossible. 

Germany had the war nearly won in January, 191 7. 
Her long streak of good fortune was about to culminate 
in the Russian revolution. But she was drunk with 
success. She forgot caution. She sacrificed substance 
to shadow. Less than ever did she comprehend the 
world about her or the true objects of her own strategy. 
She could no longer understand the great poet of her 
era of intellectual clarity and modesty : 



Germany's Long Run of Luck 59 

Nicht einen sah ich frohlich enden 
Auf den mit immer vollen Hdnden 
Die Gotter ihre Gaben streuen. 

[I never saw any one come to a happy end on whom 
the gods showered their gifts from heaped-up hands.] 

Germany should have sent to the madhouse the 
leaders, who wanted, in the winter of 1916-17, to run 
amuck with the submarine. Instead, she acclaimed 
them as military geniuses — thus writing her own doom. 



CHAPTER IV 

SEA POWER IN THE WAR 

Sea power did not win the World War. Yet the 
misuse of sea power lost it. This is a paradox which 
has troubled the extreme partisans of the Mahan theory. 
Mahan's contentions were vindicated, but in an inverse 
sense. 

Sea power such as Germany had proved a mill- 
stone around her neck. It confused her strategy. It 
tempted her away from her safe and natural field of 
military effort. The continent of Europe was her 
true terrain, just as it was Napoleon's. Speaking 
broadly, she would have been better off in a military 
sense if she had had no navy. 

"Germany's future lies on the sea," said William II 
in one of his expansive and vainglorious moments. 
No prophecy could have been more inept. No policy 
could be more dangerous for Germany than one which 
committed her to an effort to challenge Great Britain's 
mastery of the ocean. Germany's geographical posi- 
tion was an ideal one for conquests on land — for terri- 

60 



Sea Power in the War 6i 

torial expansion east and south. But it was almost 
prohibitive of sea empire. 

Germany had risen to the status of the first military- 
power in Europe without the aid of a navy. Bismarck, 
Moltke, and the generation which vanquished Austria 
and France and created the Empire would not have 
known what to do with a high seas fleet. They would 
have looked on it as a superfluity and an encumbrance. 

The illusion of German sea power took root in the 
brains of the post-Bismarckians. The Great Chancel- 
lor always trod the solid ground. He cared nothing 
for oversea colonies. He encouraged France to go 
into Tunis in 1881. He was glad to see the French 
committed to a policy of colonial expansion in Northern 
Africa. He believed that the acquisition of Tunis 
would help to reconcile France to the loss of Alsace- 
Lorraine. He also foresaw that the extension of French 
power on the southern coast of the Mediterranean 
would incense Italy and drive her into an alliance with 
Germany and Austria-Hungary. But for himself he 
coveted no colonial establishments — no "place in the 
sun" for Germany beyond the limits of the European 
continent. 

William II brusquely elbowed Bismarck off the 
stage and broke melodramatically with all the Bis- 
marckian traditions. With a showman's instincts he 



62 The Strategy of the Great War 

turned to new ideas of imperial policy. Sea power was 
one of these. Germany was to enter the race for over- 
seas trade and dominions. She was to have a great 
merchant marine, a great na"\^, and new found African 
and Asiatic colonies. 

German industry, making enormous strides under the 
protection of a semi-socialized government, responded 
eagerly to the new foreign programme. Germany, pro- 
ducing cheaply, had goods to sell, and a subsidized 
German merchant marine sprang up to carry them to 
all parts of the world. Dependencies were acquired in 
regions not yet pre-empted by other colonizing powers. 
The German flag was raised over the Cameroons, 
German West Africa, Togoland, German East Africa, 
New Guinea, Samoa, Kiaochau, and the Marshall 
Islands. France was badgered into surrendering a 
part of French West Africa in return for a quitclaim 
in Morocco. The creation of a modern n9,vy paralleled 
the rapid and profitable development of the two great 
German sea transportation companies — the Hamburg- 
American and North German Lloyd. 

What the Kaiser and his advisers could not see was 
that overseas expansion ran counter to true German 
military policy. If Germany was going to pursue the 
Prussian tradition of military conquest, her energies 
should have been concentrated for use along the lines 



Sea Power in the War 63 

of least resistance. Her natural enemies were France 
and Russia. Eastern and Middle Europe were marked 
out by nature for Teuton exploitation. To seek power 
and territory beyond the seas was only to give un- 
necessary hostages to fortune. For Germany could not 
expect to become a great colonizing nation, to maintain 
a world-wide carrying trade, and, above all, to build 
a first class navy, without exciting the distrust and 
hostility of Great Britain. And in a European war 
in which Great Britain sided with Germany's enemies 
the latter's colonies would fall, her foreign trade would 
be suppressed, and her navy would be either blockaded 
or extinguished. 

Oversea expansion could not but weaken Germany's 
military position. It necessarily introduced and stimu- 
lated pacifist tendencies within a militaristic state. 
The more intelligent and practical leaders in the up- 
building of the German merchant marine could not 
but realize that Germany's future on the seas depended 
absolutely on the retention of British goodwill and on 
the preservation of peace. 

In a letter written in December, 1917, by Albert 
Ballin, of the Hamburg-American Company, the great- 
est figure in the German shipping world, to Dr. Rathe- 
nau, the president of the General Electric Company 
and one of the leading German industrialists, a candid 



64 The Strategy of the Great War 

admission is made of the complete dependence of Ger- 
man overseas trade before the war on the favour of 
Great Britain. Says Mr. BaUin, who died just before 
the end of the war, having first lost the favour of his 
former friend and patron, the Kaiser: 

More than ever I must admit that every increase 
in our wealth, every success of our enterprises in the 
years preceding the war, were due to our relations 
with the British Empire. Its ports, its dominions, 
and its colonies were largely opened to our fleets 
and our merchants. I have often been astonished 
at that generosity, which I even regarded as folly. 
Can one suppose that we shall ever restore those 
old relations? . . . 

We aspire to recover our overseas commerce. 
On that prospect we build the fondest hopes. But 
how can we recover it in the face of Anglo-Saxon 
unity, which hates, and ought to hate, our very 
presence? Do our imbeciles of chauvinists take 
account of the fact that we haven't even a port 
where our ships can dock or where they can receive 
a friendly greeting? 

Dover, Falmouth, and Southampton, Gibraltar, 
Malta, and Alexandria, Aden, the Persian Gulf, 
Bombay, Colombo, Singapore, and Hongkong — what 
are they? English arsenals, naval bases, coaling 
stations, docks where we shall not even dare to show 
our faces, if England forbids us to do so. 

It is the same all around the continent of Africa. 
It is the same in the West Indies. It is the same in 
the Pacific. We have not a single coaling station, 
not a single dock, where we can repair our vessels. 



Sea Power in the War 65 

Ballin realized — long after it was too late — that 
German sea power had been only a peace-time fiction 
— a matter of indulgence on the part of Great Britain. 
The British were exceedingly tolerant of German 
rivalry. This "folly," as Ballin called it, was not due 
to any real consideration for Germany. It was only 
a phase of British self-complacency. The average 
British merchant had no aversion to using German 
freight carriers. He was willing to buy cheaper Ger- 
man goods and sell them at home and abroad under 
his own labels. There was no consciousness at all in 
Great Britain of a "German peril." The British pub- 
lic still put implicit faith in the diplomacy of Beacons- 
field, the cardinal principle of which was to combat 
the influence and ambitions of Russia. German 
ambitions were not taken seriously. 

The self-deception of many British statesmen about 
German purposes was extraordinary. Even down to 
August, 191 4, leaders like Lord Haldane and Sir Ed- 
ward Grey seemed unable to imagine that Germany 
would not only provoke a European war, but would 
draw Great Britain into it. It was because of this 
singular fatuity that the British had to enter the war 
so deplorably unprepared. 

The Kaiser and his advisers may have had some 
cause to think that British politicians would continue 



66 The Strategy of the Great War 

complacent while Germany was building up a power- 
ful navy in addition to a prosperous merchant marine. 
But they misread history and misjudged the British 
character when they assumed that Great Britain would 
ever tolerate the use of the German navy to destroy 
the French fleet and to seize the French Channel ports. 
Such a challenge to their own naval superiority in 
Western European waters the British people would 
certainly meet, whatever their pacifist politicians 
thought. So the creation of a German navy strong 
enough to destroy French sea power inevitably paved 
the way to war with Great Britain. 

If Germany intended to be a real sea power she would 
therefore have to count on locking horns, sooner or 
later, with the British. The officers of the German 
fleet knew this. They had their toast, "Der Tag," 
meaning the day when they expected to take Great 
Britain's measure on the seas. That sort of thing was 
magnificently impudent. But it was not war. A com- 
petent general staff would have vetoed as fantastic 
and suicidal the proposition to take on Great Britain 
as an additional enemy. And such a veto should 
have stood, whatever its effect on the Kaiser's inflated 
naval and colonial programme. 

But after the elder Moltke's death German military 
policy became confused and unstable. The Kaiser's 



Sea Power in the War 67 

erratic influence was all-pervasive. He was an enthu- 
siastic yachtsman. He was a big stockholder in the 
Hamburg-American and North German Lloyd com- 
panies. He wanted to create a tinsel colonial empire. 
He was eager to pose as war lord on the quarter-decks 
of battleships as well as at the head of divisions and 
armies. There is nothing to show that the General 
Staff tried seriously to dissuade him from his mad 
adventure on the high seas — an adventure which could 
only dissipate German resources and weaken Germany's 
highly advantageous military position. 

The military leaders humoured the whims of the All 
Highest, whether from choice or from necessity. 

Within the Higfr Command, as within every other 
governmental body, there was no true liberty of 
opinion. Only as late as 191 7 did German military 
experts begin to feel a little freedom in discussing the 
gigantic blunder of German naval policy. In his 
Deductions from the World War, published in that year 
of German military good fortune. Lieutenant- General 
Baron Freytag-Loringhoven, deputy chief of the Ger- 
man General Staff, indulges in these cautiously sceptical 
reflections : 

This is not the place to examine how far, in view 
of the all too rapid growth of her trade, world poli- 
tics and world economics may have been premature 



68 The Strategy of the Great War 

in the case of Germany, inasmuch as our continental 
position was still by no means assured. Here 
Rancke's words are applicable: "Who can control 
circumstances, calculate future events, govern the 
surging of the elements?" 

This is a veiled way of saying that William II's 
venture in sea power was a disastrous mis judgment. 
Freytag-Loringhoven also says: 

As the result of our geographical position it will 
always remain our task to form a just estimate of 
the opposing demands of world economics in the 
narrower sense and of oversea and continental 
politics. 

But this author, characteristically obsequious, diplo- 
matically gilds the pill by adding: 

The World War affords incontrovertible proof 
that Germany must for all time to come maintain 
her claim to sea power. We need not at present 
discuss by what means this aim is to be achieved. 

Empty and melancholy words! Hardly more than 
a year after they were written the greater part of the 
German high seas fleet was steaming across the North 
Sea to surrender to the Allies, and the German U-boats, 
the only units in the German navy which were able 
to keep the seas and to inflict real losses on the enemy, 
were being turned over en masse to the victors. The 



Sea Power in the War 69 

German navy struck its flag in November, 191 8, with- 
out even fighting to save appearances. It was a fitting 
end to a preposterous military experiment. 

But no one in Germany ever foresaw the tragic 
ceremony off the Firth of Forth. The strategists of the 
General Staff, who should have subordinated every- 
thing to securing Germany's Continental position, were 
silent while Admiral Tirpitz pursued for two decades 
or more his task of fitting Germany for that "future" 
on the seas of which William II had boasted. 

Tirpitz was, in a military sense, Germany's chief 
evil genius. A promoter and politician rather than a 
seaman, he worked for his own glorification and that 
of his caste. He won the confidence of the pan-Germans 
and the Junkers who saw in his schemes only another 
easy way of boosting German military expenditures. 
He spent millions of marks organizing navy leagues in 
the interior of the empire and carrying back-district 
delegations to Hamburg and Bremen, where they were 
feted and infected with the big navy propaganda. 
He had the support of the big industrials and the ex- 
porting interests and became in time one of the "un- 
crowned kings" of the Prussian state, like Krupp, 
Thyssen, Heydebrand, Ballin, and Rathenau. 

Opinionated, imperious, and fertile in intrigue, he 
bestrode Germany like an uncouth colossus. A 



70 The Strategy of the Great War 

neutral traveller gave this glimpse of him in the latter 
part of the war. A train overcrowded with women, 
children, and wounded soldiers is travelling from one 
German town to another. The disabled and suffering 
pack the compartments and the aisles. At one stop- 
ping place a spacious, locked compartment is opened 
and Tirpitz issues alone — obese, whiskered, gorgeously- 
uniformed, and haughtily rigid. What was the comfort 
of any one else on that train compared with his comfort? 

Tirpitz had his secret naval appropriations and his 
secret building programme. But there are no inviolable 
secrets in a matter like naval construction. The 
German navy, as planned by him, was soon to overtake 
and pass every other navy, except Great Britain's. 
The British Government remained apathetic for a 
long time. But the point was eventually reached 
when the British standard of naval superiority — a fleet 
equal to that of any two other powers — was threatened 
by German construction. 

Great Britain finally protested and began negotia- 
tions with Germany for a mutual limitation of build- 
ing programmes. The German Admiralty backed and 
filled, professing innocence of any intention to challenge 
British sea power. But no limitation agreement was 
ever reached. Thereafter Great Britain and Germany 
became potential enemies. However tinged with 



Sea Power in the War 71 

pacifism the Asquith-Haldane-Grey government might 
be, however slight attention it might pay to Lord 
Roberts's appeals for military preparation, British 
distrust of German naval ambitions bad been aroused. 
Tirpitz had made it impossible for Great Britain to re- 
main a spectator in any European war which Germany 
should precipitate. 

German indignation when Great Britain joined 
France and Russia in 191 4 was therefore petulant 
and insincere. The violation of Belgian neutrality fur- 
nished the Asquith government with a welcome moral 
issue on which to 'reverse its own policy of sluggish 
non-concern. Yet even without the Belgian perfidy 
Great Britain would have been obliged to enter the 
war. Her own security compelled her to accept the 
opportunity offered to end the growing menace of 
German naval power. 

But Tirpitz was to involve Germany in still more 
costly military blunders. His surface fleet was swept 
from the ocean in the first months of the war. He 
found accidentally in the submarine an offensive weapon 
worth vastly more than his battleships and cruisers. 
Yet the use he made of the U-boat was senseless and 
disastrous. Smarting at the failure of his surface 
vessels to hold the seas, he resolved to drive all other 
surface shipping off them. It was a grandiose idea. 



72 The Strategy of the Great War 

Had Tirpitz succeeded he would have won the war. 
He would have won the war equally if he had been 
able to carry through his original plan to create a sur- 
face navy strong enough to cope with Great Britain's. 

But both these ideas were phantasms. And the 
failure to realize the second entailed more fatal con- 
sequences than the failure to realize the first. German}/ 
still had a chance to win a European war after Great 
Britain had joined France and Russia. But she had 
no chance at all to win a world war into which she had 
dogged the United States by persisting in her unre- 
stricted U-boat operations. Tirpitz had his sufficient 
warning of the perils of high sea murder when he sank 
the Lusitania and raised a moral and legal issue with the 
United States. But nothing could deter him. He had 
become more than ever a visionary and a gambler. 
So, after contemptuously parleying for nearly two 
years with Washington, he began a war of piracy against 
all neutral shipping. This madness arrayed against 
Germany a power even more formidable than Great 
Britain. When reluctant America was converted 
into a belligerent Germany's last chance of victory 
disappeared. 

The German public was slow to recognize the fatal 
effects of Tirpitz's naval policy. But long before the 
end of the war the Kaiser found it advisable to make a 



Sea Power in the War 73 

show of sacrificing him to popular discontent. He 
was sidetracked, though the continuing effects of his 
blunders could not be sidetracked. 

Even naval officers and critics turned against him. 
Captain Persius was the fairest and most competent 
of the German writers on naval affairs. He had been 
a booster of the big navy idea and of unrestricted sub- 
marine warfare. But he was finally disillusioned 
enough to write in the Berliner Tagehlatt: 

Herr von Tirpitz may be assured that all attempts 
to cover over his guilt will miserably fail. The 
German people will some day have a clear under- 
standing of the situation, and then it will realize 
that the phrase which Kammerherr von Oldenberg- 
Janutschau used with reference to Herr von Beth- 
mann-HoUweg applies still better to Herr von Tirpitz : 
"I believe that never has a minister done his country 
a graver injury than he." 

Germany lost the war, therefore, because she had 
handicapped herself with naval power and then misem- 
ployed it. Had she had no navy or only a moderate 
sized coast defence navy she might not have had to 
fight Great Britain at all. She certainly would never 
have had to fight the United States. And since her 
true field of conquest was in Eastern and South-eastern 
Europe, the lack of a navy could have made no differ- 
ence whatever in her offensive strength. 



74 The Strategy of the Great War 

Her case fell outside the scope of Admiral Mahan's 
theory that sea power is the necessary adjunct of 
empire. She needed merely enough warships to keep 
control of the Baltic and to assist her land operations 
against the Baltic provinces, Finland, and the Petrograd 
district. The Baltic was closed by mines against the 
British fleet. The Black Sea was closed by the 
Dardanelles forts. Germany could therefore proceed in 
the East without any fear of hostile interference from 
Allied sea power. 

Many writers have asserted that Allied sea power 
defeated Germany. But this claim entirely overlooks 
what the Germans went out of their way to do to 
defeat themselves. It is true that control of the sea 
made possible the transportation of the American 
armies to France; and American man power turned 
the scale in land fighting against Germany. But 
Germany would never have been obliged to fight the 
United States if she had had the sagacity to pursue 
a military policy dictated by her own strategical 
necessities and limitations. 

The blockade, conducted with ever-increasing rigour, 
greatly hampered the Teuton allies. But they had 
no reason to expect anything different. And they were 
in nothing like the desperate situation in which the 
Confederate States found themselves from 1861 to 



Sea Power in the War 75 

1865. Germany was self-supporting, so far as the 
manufacture of war material was concerned. She 
had enough for her purposes. There was a shortage 
in food after 1915. But the Teuton peoples were 
never near the starvation point. The armies were 
always sufficiently supplied and lost nothing in fighting 
power by reason of shortened rations. And Germany 
constantly extended her territorial conquests, finally 
getting possession of the rich grain lands of Rumania 
and the Ukraine. — 

Reports of alarming food shortages in the Central 
States filled the Allied press iniQis, 1916, and 191 7. 
They were gross exaggerations, intended to keep up 
the spirit of the Allied publics. After 191 7 readers 
ceased to put any faith in them. Hunger would not 
have brought Germany to her knees in the fall of 191 8 
or broken the Teuton coalition if American man power 
had not arrived in Europe and the German armies 
had not been decisively beaten in Champagne, Picardy, 
Artois, and Flanders. 

The Allied blockade failed to starve Germany into 
submission, although it caused the enemy much an- 
noyance and discomfort. Allied sea power was also 
unequal in preventing the attainment of what should 
have been Germany's primary strategical aim. That 
was the conquest and absorption of Russia. 



76 The Strategy of the Great War 

The Allied fleets faltered at the Dardanelles in March, 
1 91 5. The Black Sea was never entered by French and 
British warships until after the armistice was signed. 

Control of the sea enabled the Allies to deliver war 
material to the Russian armies through Kola, Arch- 
angel, and Vladivostok. But the difficulties of land 
transportation from these ports to the eastern fighting 
front had still to be overcome. They were success- 
fully overcome only for a short period in 191 6. 

Freytag-Loringhoven says very justly of the military 
effects of the blockade : 

The consequences of the blockade to which the 
Central Powers were subjected made themselves 
felt at once. Although we have succeeded by our 
own might in developing and carrying on our 
economic life during the war, none the less the dis- 
advantages of our economic position in the world 
have made themselves felt all the time. They alone 
explain the fact that new opportunities of resistance 
constantly revealed themselves to our opponents be- 
cause the sea was open to them, and that victories 
which formerly would have been absolutely decisive ' 
and the conquest of whole kingdoms still brought us 
no nearer to peace. Thus was Russia able to recover 
from the severe defeats of the summer of 191 5, and 
to attack once more in the following year with newly 
equipped armies. 

But Brusiloff's Galician offensive of 1916 was the 
last flash in the pan of Russian fighting power. Allied 



Sea Power in the War n 

control of the sea could not check Russian disintegra- 
tion. It could not prevent the elimination of Russia 
as a belligerent. And to hold Russia in line was the 
chief aim of Entente strategy, until the United States 
came in to replace Russia. Sea power was an impor- 
tant contributing element to Allied strength. But it 
could never have decided the war in the Entente's 
favour if the war had retained its strictly European 
character. ~ 

The development of the submarine greatly compli- 
cated the problem of the sea strategists. They brought 
their influence to bear at the Paris peace conference 
to have a ban put on the use of the U-boats. But it 
would be just as reasonable to put a prohibition on the 
use of long distance guns of the "Big Bertha" type, or 
of bombing airplanes. All these instruments of destruc- 
tion render more or less precarious the guarantees 
thrown about the lives of non-combatants by the rules 
of civilized war as they existed before 1914. But the 
character of war itself has changed. It has become 
more terrible. It has now been so intensified as to 
obscure the old distinctions between combatants and 
non-combatants. Armies no longer fight armies; 
nations fight nations. 

If wars are to continue it would be against human 
nature and against all military experience to expect 



78 The Strategy of the Great War 

belligerents to forego the use of any of the means of 
destroying the power of the enemy which this war has 
developed. So the U-boats, banned or not, will un- 
doubtedly remain a potentially disturbing factor in naval 
warfare. The war's effects on sea power were in a 
sense more revolutionary than its effects on land power. 
The weaker sea powers were benefited, relatively, at 
the expense of the stronger. 

But Germany entered the war with no clear idea of 
using the strength of her U-boat squadrons as an offset 
to the weakness of her surface fleet. The development 
of the submarine was an afterthought. Tirpitz lavished 
hundreds of millions of marks on battleships and battle 
cruisers. With these he intended to make the North 
Sea a German lake — justifying the nomenclature of the 
old geographers, who used to call it the German Ocean. 

He overlooked the fact that in surface sea fighting 
under modem conditions inferiority is fatal. A weaker 
army, favoured by accidents of position, may easily 
defeat a stronger army. But on the sea there is no 
advantage of position. The inferior squadron or fleet 
rarely wins and is always lucky to escape destruction. 
Off Jutland the German navy was clearly beaten, 
though low visibility conditions and Admiral Jellicoe's 
caution allowed it to slink back to port. Its next ap- 
pearance in the open was for the purpose of surrendering. 



Sea Power in the War 79 

Tirpitz had builded for defeat, not for victory. His 
naval policy was radically wrong. Sea power is a 
long, slow growth. And of all the belligerent nations 
of the first rank Germany was the least qualified in 
a military sense to engage in a war at sea. Her future 
lay elsewhere. And she would probably have made it 
secure if she had only followed from the beginning the 
modest but adequate naval policy of Austria-Hungary, 
her lightly esteemed neighbour and ally. 



CHAPTER V 

DEVELOPMENT OF GERMAN STRATEGY 

The Great War of 19 14-18 demolished all pre- 
cedents. It resulted in the most stupendous outpour- 
ing of human energy ever known. All the standards 
by which military and economic effort had been meas- 
ured in the past suddenly became obsolete. 

It was a commonplace among financiers before the 
war began that no European conflict could last more 
than twelve months without bankrupting the belliger- 
ents. International finance was supposed to hold the 
purse strings of all governments, and was expected to 
call a halt in time on ruinous war expenditures. 

But in their wildest dreams the financial experts 
had never sensed what modern industrial nations can 
do when they plunge into war. The two belligerent 
groups put 50,000,000 men in the field and spent over 
$250,000,000,000 for war purposes. Once the pent- 
up resources of the countries at war were unleashed all 
thought of anything short of victory or exhaustion 

was abandoned. The United States was in the war 

80 



Development of German Strategy 8i 

only a little more than eighteen months. Yet in that 
period it spent or contracted to spend $55,000,000,000, 
including $10,000,000,000 loaned to its Allies. The 
total American Civil War debt was only about 
$3,000,000,000. 

Economically and financially, the war fought itself. 
It soon got beyond control of those who may have 
believed in the beginning that they would be able to 
direct it or to set bounds to it. It was too vast an 
enterprise to be shaped by any government or group 
of governments. It plunged along to its conclusion 
in its own ponderous way, smashing all forecasts and 
calculations. 

This is true to a large extent of the military conduct 
of the war as well as of its economic conduct. No 
General Staff was prepared for what actually happened 
when the huge armies of the twentieth century — na- 
tions under arms, in reality — clashed in the field under 
revolutionized conditions of warfare. No General Staff 
fought the war as it had planned to fight it. After 
the first two months none even saw very clearly what 
was ahead. By reason of its immensity, the war 
mastered the strategists and developed its own strategy. 
Both tactically and strategically it had to find itself. 

Germany was immensely better prepared for the 
struggle than her opponents were. She was able to 



82 The Strategy of the Great War 

seize the offensive at the outset, and, from the point 
of view of grand strategy, she retained it until the 
contest was in its last stages. As the aggressor and as 
the most highly organized military state in Europe, 
she should have been able, if any belligerent was, to 
reduce her strategy to the simplest and clearest terms. 
Having freedom of action, interior lines, and a choice 
of operating fronts, she might reasonably have been 
expected to formulate and pursue a sharply defined 
and consistent military policy. 

Yet, as a matter of fact, the most striking feature of 
German strategy throughout the war was its lack of 
clarity and unification. German conceptions were 
confused by the nuge initial failure at the Marne. 
The effects of that confusion were never eradicated. 

It was fairly clear after the Marne and Flanders 
campaigns of 19 14 that German victory was not to 
be achieved in the West. The forces there were too 
evenly balanced. The speedy introduction of trench 
warfare also tended to enforce a condition of barren 
deadlock on the Western Front. Germany's true field 
of military exploitation therefore lay in the East. 
Circumstances drove her there in the spring of 191 5. 
Her easiest and most fruitful victories were won there. 
The opening up of Russia, Rumania, Serbia, the Cau- 
casus, and Persia offered her a splendid opportunity 



Development of German Strategy 83 

to offset the economic injury done her by the AlHed 
Blockade. 

But she would not pursue her Eastern campaigns 
to their logical conclusion, contenting herself at the 
same time with a strict defensive in the West. Her 
General Staff- seemed unable to throw off the spell of 
the elder Moltke's achievements in 1870-71. What 
he had done the younger Moltke, Falkenhayn, and 
Ludendorff all hankered to do. The first failed at the 
Marne in 1914; the second failed at Verdun in 1916; 
the third failed at the Marne in 1918. 

Moltke the Younger was less blameworthy than the 
others. He had no opportunity to amend his theories 
in the light of experience. The other two had ample 
opportunity to do so. But, one and all, they sought 
to make the conduct of the war conform to fixed, pre- 
conceived strategic notions instead of letting their 
strategy be determined by forces and circumstances 
disclosing themselves as the struggle progressed. Ger- 
many never developed a military leader who was in the 
true sense an opportunist. And in an inexact and 
problematical art like war opportunism is the outlet 
of genius. 

The great fault of the German military mind is its 
rigidity. It cannot readjust itself readily to unfore- 
seen conditions. It cannot reverse itself with sup- 



84 The Strategy of the Great War 

pleness when a fundamental misconception has to be 
rectified. Thus in this war the German military lead- 
ers were never able to rid themselves of their fatal 
delusions about the value of German sea power and 
the necessity of a victorious offensive in the West. 

What they demanded was an orientation with which 
they were familiar — a policy bequeathed to them by 
some supposed military superman like the elder Moltke 
or Schlieffen or Tirpitz, and stamped with the seal of 
his oracular authority. The supreme test of a mili- 
tary operation in German eyes is not whether it was 
adapted to the actual requirements or potentialities 
of a situation, but whether it was or was not executed 
according to specifications prepared long in advance 
— in other words, whether it was or was not what the 
German military writers call planmdssig. And this 
passion for adhering to routine, to the tradition of 
General Staff infallibility, and the formulas of the past 
— ^manifested tactically in a slavish employment of 
close formation infantry attacks all through the earlier 
period of the war — again and again prevented Germany 
from reaping the full advantages of her strategical 
freedom and of her unchallenged superiority on the 
Eastern Front. 

Germany began the war, of course, with an all-em- 
bracing scheme of strategy. The German public had 



Development of German Strategy 85 

long accepted the legend of the elder Moltke's sending 
word to General Staff Headquarters in Berlin when 
France was tricked into declaring war on Germany 
in 1870: "Open drawer so and so." That legend had 
a basis of nruth. Moltke the Elder had carefully 
planned the invasion of Alsace-Lorraine, and under 
the simpler conditions of warfare which existed in 
1870 he was able to conduct his campaign with an 
appearance of marvellous prevision. He defeated Baz- 
aine and MacMahon according to schedule, captured 
their armies, and reduced France to helplessness. 

Moltke the Younger, when Germany declared war 
on France in 191 4, may also have given orders to open 
a similar drawer in one of the General Staff's cabinets. 
But he was not to have his way so easily with France. 
After going on swimmingly for five weeks his campaign 
for Paris collapsed. His armies were defeated, through 
gross strategical blunders at the battle of the Marne. 
After a short secondary campaign in Flanders, which 
also failed in the large sense, the Germans were thrown 
back on the defensive on the Western Front — a defen- 
sive which was to last, except for the Verdun episode, 
from December, 19 14, until March, 191 8. All German 
strategical preconceptions were thus shattered before 
the war had fairly begun. 

After the First Marne there was a period of extra- 



86 The Strategy of the Great War 

ordinary depression at German Grand Headquarters. 
Just after the conclusion of the armistice the former 
Crown Prince of Prussia was reported as saying that 
in his opinion the Mame ended Germany's hopes of 
victory. That is only after-the- event wisdom — and 
a poor quality of it in the bargain. Germany came 
much nearer winning the war on many later occasions 
than she did at the culminating moment of her first 
rush into France. 

The depression among the German leaders was 
psychological. They saw a great military gamble 
go wrong when, on the basis of their fallacious deduc- 
tions from the elder Moltke's victory over the French 
in 1870, it should have been successful. They were 
amazed and disheartened. They tried to cover over 
their defeat with childish misrepresentations. They 
excised all reference to the Mame from their com- 
muniques. They refused to face open-mindedly the 
results of the Mame campaign. 

Yet, on its face, the Mame was a warning that the 
fundamental conception of German military policy 
was unsound. The German Staff, still living in glorious 
memories of 1870-71, had grossly undervalued the 
power of France. It had had to pay a disconcerting 
penalty for that error. Lieutenant General Baron 
Freytag-Loringhoven admitted the truth in 191 7 when 



Development of German Strategy 87 

he wrote: "The German offensive at the beginning of 
Septernber, 1914, was not powerful enough to over- 
throw the enemy." But if the Germans could not 
hope to overthrow the enemy in September, 191 4, when 
Germany's completer preparedness told more heavily 
in her favour than it could ever tell again, what reason- 
able hope of victory lay in a continuation of the Western 
offensive ? 

The fundamental idea of German military policy — 
the crushing of France — having proved illusory, a 
soldier of the quality of Frederick the Great, or Napo- 
leon or the elder Moltke would have discarded it. 
But Germany had no such soldier. The Kaiser was a 
military incompetent. Worse than that, he was sur- 
rounded by generals without genius. He could remove 
the younger Moltke. But he could replace him only 
with a Falkenhayn, a Hindenburg, or a Ludendorff. 

Dr. Miihlon says that the younger Moltke had no 
responsibility for the plan of operations which went 
to wreck at the Mame. Freytag-Loringhoven says 
the same thing. The plan was a legacy from the days 
of Count Schlieffen, the elder Moltke's successor as 
Chief of the General Staff. 

Count Schlieffen was the chief proponent in Germany 
of the strategy of "double envelopment." He wrote 
a work called CanncB, in which he illustrated from Han- 



88 The Strategy of the Great War 

nibal's victory the working out of his own theories. 
Schlieffen beHeved in retaining the enemy's centre, 
or even yielding to him a little there, while outflanking 
and enclosing him on both wings. A victory of the 
Cannae type, he held, was the only sort which would 
ensure the annihilation of an opponent. 

Foch illustrated the Cannse theory tactically and 
locally at the second battle of the Marne, when he 
encouraged the Germans to push south of the river, 
between Chateau-Thierry and Dormans, and also to 
move up the Marne Valley toward Epernay, while 
he was preparing to strike their right wing between 
Chateau-Thierry and Soissons and their left wing 
between Dormans and Rheims. But, of course, Foch 
had no idea of enveloping either the German right wing 
or the German left wing. He was trying to crush the 
Marne salient by a breaking through operation on the 
west side. 

Freytag-Loringhoven claims that the Germans won 
a Cannae victory over the Russians at Tannenberg in 
1914, and over the Rumanians at Hermannstadt in 
191 6. But they never realized Count Schlieffen 's pet 
idea in the West. By coming south through Belgium 
in August, 1 91 4, the younger Moltke hoped to envelop 
the French left wing east of Paris. His simultaneous 
operation on the Nancy front was intended to shake 



Development of German Strategy 89 

loose and envelop the French right wing, resting on 
the Lorraine border. Then the French armies would 
have had to' retreat in disorder south of the Seine and 
west of the Meuse. Paris would have fallen and all 
the eastern frontier would have been cleared. 

But through a fatal miscalculation of the strength 
and fighting quality of the French armies all these 
plans went awry. Instead of enveloping the French 
left to the east of Paris, the German armies in that 
region were themselves threatened with envelopment 
by Maunoury's flanking movement out of the capital. 
Kluck saved the German western armies by a quick 
shift of front. But a German retreat to the Aisne had 
become inevitable. Meanwhile the attack on Nancy 
had ended in a fiasco. 

Schlieffen's strategy broke down completely. This 
was not the younger Moltke's fault, although he was 
quickly made the Kaiser's scapegoat. He suffered for 
the shortcomings of others. 

Yet if his dismissal had been coincident with a radi- 
cal change in German military policy, it would have 
been entirely justified. It would have indicated that 
there were minds at German headquarters capable of 
reading the signs in the military firmament. 

The Marne campaign, and the Flanders campaign 
which supplemented it, both proved that Germany 



90 The Strategy of the Great War 

had little hope of conquering France. Germany was 
not strong enough in 1914, 1915, 1916, or 1917 to win 
the war on the Western Front. Possibly she might 
have forced a draw there in 1918, after Russia's dis- 
appearance, if she had not wantonly dragged the 
United States in as a belligerent. To a really com- 
petent grand strategist it should have been clear even 
at the end of 1914 that there could be no Cann« in 
the West. The part of wisdom, therefore, for the 
Germans was to hold fast to Belgium and conquered 
Northern France and pin the French and British down 
there to a barren war of positions, while bending every 
energy to eliminating Russia and establishing a Teuton 
overlordship of Middle and Eastern Europe. 

Germany did go east in the spring of 191 5. But 
she went more from com_pulsion than from choice. 
The German plan of operations on the Eastern Front 
had also gone to wreck. Moltke the Elder has told 
us that in 1870, when there was some reason at the 
outset of the war to fear Austrian co-operation with 
France, he had decided to keep only a few second-line 
army corps in Saxony and vSilesia, to hold off the Aus- 
trian armies, while seeking a decision in Alsace-Lorraine. 
So in 1 9 14 the German High Command sent only a 
few hundred thousand men into East Prussia to con- 
tain the northern Russian armies. To Austria-Hungary 



Development of German Strategy 91 

was confided the task of an offensive into Poland which 
should isolate Warsaw and pin the southern Russian 
armies to the line of Brest-Litovsk— the main Russian 
line of mobilization. 

But Russia got into the war too quickly. East 
Prussia was invaded. The Austro-Hungarian armies 
were routed in Eastern Galicia, lost Lemberg and the 
line of the San, and were driven at many points beyond 
the Carpathians. Hindenburg crushed the Russians 
at the battle of Tannenberg, in August, 1914, end- 
ing the East Prussian invasion. But Austria-Hungary 
could not rally for many months from her first defeats. 
Hindenburg's two campaigns for Warsaw, in October 
and December, 1914, had failed. Przemysl was lost 
in March, 191 5. It was imperative that Germany 
should drop offensive operations in the West and go 
east to reckon with the Russians, who now stood 
almost at the gates of Cracow. 

Turkey's entry into the war had also greatly ex- 
tended Germany's military opportunities in the East. 
The barring of the Dardanelles and Turkey's successful 
defence of the Straits had dashed Allied expectations 
of connecting up the Russian and Western fronts. 
With almost no help from Germany Turkey had iso- 
lated Russia, thus insuring the latter' s eventual col- 
lapse. But Turkey needed to be reinforced and to be 



92 The Strategy of the Great War 

supplied with munitions. A corridor from Berlin to 
Constantinople had to be cut through the Balkans. 

Every military consideration now compelled a con- 
centration of Germany's main effort in the East. So 
on May Day, 191 5, Hindenburg and Mackensen began 
their great drive against the Russians in Galicia and 
Poland. In four months they had cleared Galicia, 
Poland, Courland, part of Lithuania, and all of Buko- 
wina. Then Mackensen turned south . Bulgaria joined 
the Central Alliance. Serbia, Montenegro, and Albania 
were overrun, Rumania was cut off, and Turkey was 
linked up securely with the new German Mittel-Europa. 

No other German campaign showed results compar- 
able in a military and political sense with those of this 
one. In a single summer Germany had changed the 
face of Europe — and at a cost so small as to be almost 
negligible. She was on the true road to the only sort 
of empire which was within the scope of her military 
resources — towards a true solidification of her Con- 
tinental position. By December, 191 5, she was in a 
condition either to ask or to grant a peace assuring her 
supremacy in Europe. 

Hindenburg, who had been the operating chief on 
the Eastern Front, became the idol of the German 
people. They hastened to erect huge wooden images 
of him and drive them full of gold and silver nails — a 



Development of German Strategy 93 

primitive Germanic method of deification. In this 
they obeyed a sound instinct. Hindenburg stood 
above all things for an Eastern military policy. His 
fame was the outgrowth of the natural trend of the 
war. 

But the German military mind was unconvinced. 
Falkenhayn, Moltke's successor, was a Westerner by 
predilection. He conceived the idea of stabilizing 
the Eastern Front and turning west again. At Grand 
Headquarters the lure of Paris was still potent. All 
through the winter of 191 5-1 6 Falkenhayn was busy 
preparing his "break through" on the Verdun front, 
intended to destroy the morale of the French and at 
the same time to anticipate and forestall the offensive 
on the Somme which the British were nearly ready to 
begin. 

The Verdun campaign was an unrelieved failure. 
It cost Falkenhayn several hundred thousand casual- 
ties. It depleted his precious strategic reserve. It 
gave France a new sense of security, and it did not 
delay by a week the anticipated Allied offensive in 
Artois and Picardy. 

Falkenhayn was disgraced, Hindenburg was pro- 
moted to be Chief of Staff, and Germany returned to 
a patient defensive in the West. For a second time 
the pressure of circumstances called Germany east. 



94 The Strategy of the Great War 

The defeat at Verdun had stirred the Russians to ac- 
tion. The Brusiloff offensive of 1916 was at hand 
and Rumania was showing signs of joining the Entente. 

Brusiloff won some notable victories over the Austro- 
Hungarians in Volhynia, Galicia, and Bukowina. Tens 
of thousands of disaffected Czecho-Slovak and South 
Slav troops threw down their arms and surrendered 
to the Russians. Considerable territory was recovered. 
But when German reinforcements arrived the Russian 
armies were halted. It was Russia's last flash of 
offensive strength. Pacifist intrigues inside the govern- 
ment at Petrograd now began to aggravate the diffi- 
culties of the armies in the field. 

Rumania came into the war in the fall of 19 16 — 
relying on Allied promises, which were never to be 
fulfilled. The Germans were prepared to crush this 
small, exposed Balkan state. A concentric attack 
from Transylvania, Serbia, and ^^ulgaria soon cleared 
all of Wallachia. Bucharest fell — hardly six weeks 
after war was declared. 

Here again the military, political, and economic 
possibilities of an exploitation of the East Front were 
startlingly demonstrated. Germany could fight and 
win on that front almost with one hand tied behind 
her back. Rumania became a new source of food, 
oil, and other war supplies. And the vast, inert, ex- 



Development of German Strategy 95 

hausted Muscovite empire was now on the point of 
breaking up. 

German grand strategy shone brightest during the 
first six or eight months of Hindenburg's tenure as 
Chief of Staff. He remained always by conviction an 
Easterner. He was satisfied to reap the advantages 
of the Russian and Balkan situations. He further 
emphasized Germany's proper defensive role in the 
West by planning and executing the highly success- 
ful strategical retirement of March, 191 7, out of the 
Noyon salient. He constructed the massive Hinden- 
burg line from La Fere to St. Quentin, past Cambrai, 
and then past Douai toward Lens. It was the line 
which he intended to hold — and which he did hold 
successfully all through 191 7. 

But Ludendorff had now begun to overshadow 
Hindenburg. The former was of the true rigid, ruth- 
less, narrow-visioned German General Staff type. He 
was bitten with the idea of German invincibility. He 
sympathized with the world empire paranoia of Tirpitz 
and the extreme pan-Germans. He already pictured 
himself as leading the eventual German march on 
Paris. 

So he let the East slip more and more out of his 
mind's eye. He coquetted with the rabid naval and 
Fatherland Party group, which was clamouring for a 



96 The Strategy of the Great War 

renewal of unrestricted submarine warfare. It was 
Ludendorfi's influence which turned the scale in Janu- 
ary, 1917, when Bethmann-Hollweg's programme of 
preventing war with the United States by concessions 
such as were embodied in the celebrated Suffolk note 
was discarded. He drove Bethmann-Hollweg out of 
office. He assented to the new blockade proclaimed 
by the Admiralty, which was in effect a notice to all 
neutral shipping to keep out of northern Atlantic and 
Mediterranean waters or be sunk on sight. He must 
therefore share with Tirpitz the responsibility for the 
fatal decision which turned Germany back from the 
path of victory. Imitating Falkenhayn, he again 
perverted German military policy and nullified the 
effects of all the imposing German successes on the 
Eastern Front. 

The Russian revolution arrived. With dramatic 
swiftness the empire perished; the Duma government 
rose and fell; Kerensky succeeded and sanctioned the 
brief and ineffective Komiloff offensive in Bukowina 
and Galicia and then fell himself. Russia now dis- 
appeared as a military factor. Had Germany held off 
on her unrestricted submarine campaign she would 
practically have won the war by the end of 191 7. 
Russia lay open for partition. As the farce- tragedy 
of Brest-Litovsk was to prove, no obstacle existed any 



Development of German Strategy 97 

longer to German penetration as far as the Urals, into 
the Caucasus and into Persia. 

But the Germans were never able to consolidate their 
empire in the East. Ludendorff had loaded himself 
down with other burdens. Having dragged America 
into the war, it was now incumbent on him to go west 
and conquer Italy, France, and Great Britain before 
American man power should begin to flow across the 
Atlantic, 

He struck at Italy first, winning, in November, 
1 91 7, the great victory of Caporetto — one of the com- 
pletest of the war. Italy was thrown roughly back 
on the defensive, losing nearly all Venetia, about 
two hundred thousand prisoners, and probably more 
than one thousand guns. Only the approach of bad 
weather saved Venice. Italy didn't recover from this 
blow for many months. 

Next came the great drive of 191 8 in Northern France. 
On this Ludendorff staked everything that Germany 
had left. There is reason to think that Hindenburg 
dissented from his colleague's win-all-lose-all policy, 
and that William II was inclined to agree with Hinden- 
burg. 

It will always remain a question whether Germany 
did not still have a chance in the spring of 191 8 to fight 
the war to a draw by standing on the defensive in 



98 The Strategy of the Great War 

France, while attempting to develop Finland, the 
Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, the Baltic Provinces, and 
possibly even Rumania, Bessarabia, and the Crimea 
into military assets. 

Certainly, if she had continued on the defensive 
Germany could not have lost the war in 1918 — per- 
haps not in 1919. The Allies were bound to remain 
gravely handicapped so long as they continued to 
renounce the advantages of unity of command. And 
Allied unity of command would hardly have come if 
Ludendorff had not broken the British line west of 
St. Quentin in March, 191 8, and nearly destroyed the 
British Fifth Army. 

Ludendorff's offensive in France forced the selection 
of Foch as the Allied generalissimo and vastly accel- 
erated the transportation of American troops to Europe. 
Without Foch and without the American reinforcement 
the Allies would probably have made little moie pro- 
gress on the Western Front in 191 8 than they had made 
in 1917. 

But Ludendorff was a dogmatist and a plunger. He 
insisted on having his way and had it. By his errors 
of tactics as well as of strategy he quickly wrecked 
the great German military establishment. 

Yet long before the Second Marne German political 
and military obtuseness had fumbled away all chance of 



Development of German Strategy 99 

victory. The Germans never learned the lesson of 
the First Marne. They could have won their war in 
Eastern Europe. Instead, they wanted to win it on 
the sea and in Western Europe. What the First Marne, 
Verdun, and the first submarine campaign had already 
proved, the Second Marne and the second submarine 
campaign only proved over again. It was never within 
the scope of Teuton resources to conquer the world. 
And the resources which would have sufficed to conquer 
Eastern Europe were wasted in trying to reduce Paris 
and subjugate France. 



CHAPTER VI 

DEVELOPMENT OF ALLIED STRATEGY 

Germany never achieved clarity in her strategy, 
although her true military policy was obvious. She 
had seized the offensive, and held on to it. Her geo- 
graphical position offered her enormous advantages. 
She fought on interior lines. She enjoyed unity of 
command. Everything contributed to give her a 
free hand in a military way. Yet she could never fix 
her goal clearly in her mind's eye and move steadily 
toward it. 

The case with the Allies was entirely different. 
Their geographical position was against them. They 
were strung out around the periphery of a vast circle. 
At the beginning of the war the British Isles, France, 
and Belgium constituted one Allied cluster in north- 
western Europe. Serbia and Montenegro — forming 
a second group — were isolated in the Balkans. Russia 
was cut off on the distant Eastern Front. 

The northern sea passage to Russia through the 
Baltic was sealed by German mines in the Cattegat 



Development of Allied Strategy loi 

and the Danish Great Belt. The southern passage 
through the Dardanelles was blocked by Turkey. 
Only the precarious Arctic Ocean route remained open 
— and the almost prohibitive 'round-the-globe con- 
nection through Vladivostok. 

When Italy came into the war, in 191 5, the Atlantic 
and Mediterranean fronts were partially linked up. 
But Italy had been a belligerent hardly six months 
when Serbia and Montenegro were overrun by the 
Germans. For more than two years thereafter the 
only secure footing left to the Allies in the Balkan 
peninsula was the intrenched camp of Salonica. In 
Asia there were minor Allied operating fronts in lower 
Palestine, in Mesopotamia, and in Armenia — all distinct 
and widely separated from one another. German 
communications radiated from the centre of the circle 
within which the Teuton Powers were beleaguered. 
Allied communications around the circumference were 
straggling and difficult to maintain. 

The primary aim of Allied strategy was to connect 
the scattered exterior fronts and to co-ordinate the 
operations on them. If the Russian front from the 
Baltic Sea to the Black Sea could be joined physically 
with the Balkan, Italian, and Franco-Belgian fronts 
the more distant Asian fronts would become negligible. 
Turkey could not long defend herself in Mesopotamia, 



I02 The Strategy of the Great War 

Palestine, and Armenia if the passage of the Dardanelles 
were forced. Constantinople captured and the Balkan 
battle line advanced to the Danube, the circle within 
which the Central Powers were confined would become 
too narrow for comfort. Concerted and continuous 
Allied pressure would then be possible at all points of 
the circumference — the sort of pressure which Foch 
applied superbly after August, 191 8. 

But the Allies never forced the Dardanelles Straits. 
The Western Powers did not succeed in getting into 
actual contact with the Russians, either in Europe or 
in Asia. The nearest approach to this great strategical 
objective was the temporary junction of a small body 
of Cossacks with the British advance guard in the Tigris 
Valley, north-east of Bagdad, in the spring of 1917. 
So nearly till the end of the war the Allies had to fight 
disjointedly on seven different fronts. 

The results of their scattered and wasteful effort 
were appalling. Russia was put out of the war because 
she was not highly organized enough industrially to 
supply herself with guns and munitions. She needed 
supplies and a stiffening of first-class western officers 
and troops — the sort of stiffening which Germany 
constantly furnished to the Austro-Hungarians, Bul- 
garians, and Turks. She couldn't get them, and in 
spite of her immense surplus of man power she steadily 



Development of Allied Strategy 103 

deteriorated in the field, as she had done ten years 
before in the war with Japan. MiHtary exhaustion 
in her case was aggravated by pro-German perfidy 
inside the Russian Court and Cabinet. Russia passed 
out of the war for all practical purposes at the end of 
191 6. While she was in it no single purpose of Entente 
strategy was achieved. 

The Allies had shown themselves incapable of a 
unified concentric offensive. The reason of this lay 
on the surface. They were unable to attain anything 
like unity of command. Germany absolutely domi- 
nated the Quadruple AlHance. Her General Staff's 
word was law for all the Teuton Powers. But there 
was no similar co-ordinating influence on the other side. 
Great Britain and France were loyal associates. But 
neither wanted to yield military priority to the other. 

National pride and interest stood in the way of a 
merger. France, by the superiority of her military 
organization and her greater wealth of military talent, 
was logically entitled to leadership. But Great Britain 
had responded to France's appeal for help. She was 
preparing to raise armies equal in size to those of France. 
She was conducting campaigns of her own in Palestine 
and Mesopotamia. She furnished the great bulk of 
the forces for the Gallipoli expedition. She was loath 
to surrender control of her own armies — even of those 



I04 The Strategy of the Great War 

actually on French soil. And France was never in a 
position to ask her to do so. Only the urgency of the 
United States and the uneasiness in Great Britain 
following the defeat of the British Fifth Army before 
St. Quentin, in March, 1918, cleared the way for the 
tardy nomination of Foch as the Allied generalissimo. 
Up to that time English military opinion had stood 
out for a divided command, although the Premier, 
Mr. Lloyd-George, favoured unification. 

Italy entered the war in pursuance of her own na- 
tional ends. She wanted to secure these — to recover 
Trieste and the Trentino and to establish herself on 
the eastern coast of the Adriatic. She had her own 
strategical plans, and the other Entente Powers could 
not expect to interfere with them. She found the 
Austro-Hungarian defence of the Isonzo unexpectedly 
obstinate. She asked for help in pushing her campaign 
for Trieste and Laibach. But France and Great Brit- 
ain preferred to use their troops elsewhere. After 
Caporetto the Italians called for aid in defending 
Venice. The French and British then sent some divi- 
sions south. By that time Allied unity of command 
was approaching realization. 

As for Russia, there was never a chance of anything 
like real military fellowship with the Allies. The 
Russian front remained remote and independent. 



Development of Allied Strategy 105 

Some general exchange of views through the Allied 
Military Council was possible. But this council had 
merely advisory functions. The individual govern- 
ments and army commands were not bound to follow 
its suggestions. The first Russian offensive into East 
Prussia was timed so as to relieve German pressure on 
France just before the first battle of the Mame. 
Brusiloff's great Volhynian and Galician offensive of 
1916 forced the Austro-Hungarians to suspend their 
first attack on Italy, down the valley of the Adige, 
But co-ordination of this sort was rare. The Allied 
concentric front was too vast, and the Allied strategic 
clearing house at Versailles was too limited in scope and 
authority to enforce any genuine unity of military policy. 

But even if the Entente Powers had more completely 
pooled their strength and unified their leadership, 
they would still have had difficulty in working out a 
formidable concerted offensive. They lacked the 
ability to impose their strategy on Germany. The 
initial German successes in Belgium and France had 
pinned the French down to the defensive. 

The French departments which the German armies 
had overrun were the chief industrial section of France. 
From September, 1914, to September, 1918, the Ger- 
mans were always within sixty miles of Paris. Most 
of the time they were even closer than that. Paris is 



io6 The Strategy of the Great War 

the heart of France. It was the paramount aim of the 
French to defend their capital and to dislodge the 
invaders from French soil. Every other object was 
secondary. 

In Flanders the Germans threatened the Channel 
ports, which were almost as important to the British 
as Dover and Folkestone. The French and British 
armies thus came to grips with the Germans in North- 
em France, and felt — often to an unreasonable degree 
— that they could not afford to let go in order to carry 
the war elsewhere. They were tied down, in a sense, 
to the Western Front, not alone because it was the 
front nearest their bases, but because it was the front 
covering Paris and London. 

Many Allied critics have written about the contro- 
versy between the "Westerners" and the "Easterners" 
as if it involved a choice between two spheres of opera- 
tion which were equally open. But complete freedom 
of action was denied both to the British and the French 
— to the French of course, much more than to the 
British. A French generalissimo would have felt 
morally compelled — so long as no direct connection 
with Russia could be established — to confine his offen- 
sives to the French front. That was the inevitable 
result of the German occupation of Belgium and North- 
em France. 



Development of Allied Strategy 107 

The Allied local offensives in the West were really 
a form of defensive. Germany could turn east or 
west at will, because the offensive was always hers 
in the broad sense. French and British strategy, 
whatever form it took, was more or less conditioned on 
protecting Paris and the Channel ports. 

The unforeseen developments of the war put all a 
priori Entente strategy out of joint. France and Russia 
had made plans as early as 1892 to meet an attack 
by the Triple Alliance. At that time Russia was 
rated much higher as a military power than the facts 
justified. She had defeated Turkey completely in 
1877-78. She still retained much of the military 
reputation she had built up in the Napoleonic Wars. 
The war with Japan had not yet disclosed her de- 
cadence. It was natural, therefore, that the French 
should have counted in 1892 on being able to make 
headway, with Russia as an ally, against Germany, 
Austria-Hungary, and Italy. 

According to the secret military agreements of 1892 
(made public in September, 1918, after the Germans 
had obtained copies of them from the archives at 
Petrograd), France and Russia expected to be able to 
crush Germany, while containing the Austro-Hungarian 
and Italian armies. 

These calculations were entirely fallacious. The 



io8 The Strategy of the Great War 

French and Russian staffs estimated that Germany- 
would be able to put into the field at the outset i ,550,000 
men and 3564 field guns. Austria-Hungary was ex- 
pected to mobilize on the Russian front 900,000 men, 
with 1776 guns. Italy was counted on to muster on 
the Italian side of the Alps 360,000 men and 1092 guns. 
Says the report of General de Miribel, of the French 
General Staff, which was transmitted to Petrograd 
along with the military protocols: 

The forces of the Triple Alliance in the first line 
therefore would be 137 infantry divisions, with three 
divisions of cavalry, nineteen divisions of inde- 
pendent cavalry, and 6432 field guns, or a total of 
2,810,000 men. 

France intended to employ in the first line, after 
providing for the defence of Algiers and Tunis and 
of her coasts, seventy-five divisions of infantry, seven 
divisions of independent cavalry, and 3370 field guns, 
a total of 1,500,000 men. Russia, after safeguarding 
her Turkish frontiers, was to supply sixty-six infantry 
divisions, twenty divisions of cavalry, 80,000 Cossacks, 
and 3290 guns. The Franco-Russian forces were to 
total 3,150,000 men and 7160 guns — showing a slight 
Entente superiority both in troops and artillery. 

The Franco-Russian compact called for a vigorous 
offensive against Germany. The French agreed to 



Development of Allied Strategy 109 

devote more than five sixths of their first Hne troops 
to such an effort. They planned to use not more than 
ten of their seventy-five infantry divisions on the 
ItaHan front, which was strongly protected by moim- 
tain barriers. The other sixty-five were to be used on 
the German border. 

French strategy was summarized in these sentences: 

The French General Staff is penetrated by the 
principle that in such a struggle the essential object 
is to prosecute the destruction of the principal enemy. 
The defeating of the others must inevitably follow. 
In a word, once Germany were conquered, the Franco- 
Russian armies would be able to impose their will 
on Austria and Italy. 

Russia was therefore to model her policy after 
France's. She was to contain the Austro-Hungarians 
in GaUcia, Bukowina, and Southern Poland with thirty- 
three divisions and employ her other thirty-three divi- 
sions in an invasion of East Prussia. 

These forces [said the agreement], added to the 
sixty-five divisions of the French army, would be 
sufficiently powerful, especially if they arrived in 
time, to make an end of the German army. 

Futile expectations! Italy broke away from the 
Triple Alliance in 19 14, as soon as war was declared. 
Her neutrality enabled France to disgarnish the ItaHan 



no The Strategy of the Great War 

frontier and concentrate all her first line divisions in 
the North. Russia did "arrive in time" on the East 
Prussian border. But the East Prussian invasion 
was short-lived. It ended in the huge disaster of 
Tannenberg. The Russians won an initial victory 
over the Germans at Gumbinnen — in the early days 
of August, 19 14. But thereafter they never succeeded 
in defeating the Gerrnans except when fighting on the 
defensive. Russia as a military power was no longer 
in the same class with Germany or France. Her armies 
could still defeat those of Austria-Hungary or Turkey. 
But they were always hopelessly incapable, through 
defects in equipment, leadership, and morale, of an 
offensive against Germany. 

The natural result was that the Russians abandoned 
the strategic precept which the French staff had enun- 
ciated — that "the essential object is to prosecute the 
destruction of the principal enemy." They turned 
the force of their attack against Austria-Hungary, the 
secondary enemy. On the Austro-Hungarian front 
they had a series of remarkable successes. They con- 
quered Bukowina and more than two thirds of Galicia. 
They captured the fortress of Przemysl with its garrison 
of 130,000 men. They fought their way across the 
Carpathians. In the first nine months of the war 
they buoyed up the hopes of the Entente, and they 



Development of Allied Strategy m 

might have continued to be a factor of the greatest 
importance if France and Great Britain had been able 
to munition them, steady them, or direct their miHtary 
energies, as Germany did with her weaker associates. 
But Russian isolation was always a fatal obstacle to 
the accomplishment of the preconcerted ends of Entente 
strategy. 

France, too, was tragically unable to live up to her 
strategical conceptions. She had greatly underesti- 
mated German preparedness. Instead of invading 
Germany, she was forced to a four years'^ defence of 
her own territory. At the First Marne it was not a 
question of her "making an end of the German army," 
but of herself escaping being made an end of. 

Joffre did launch a French offensive in August, 191 4, 
as a stopper to the German invasion of Belgium. It 
showed his fine spirit of confidence in the armies under 
his command. But it had little else to recommend it. 
The dash into Alsace, the advance across the Seille 
toward Metz, and the movement east of the Meuse 
into the Ardennes were strategical errors. They were 
based on a miscalculation of German strength. Joffre's 
idea, apparently, was that the irruption of the German 
right wing through Belgium could be halted by French 
pressure on the armies constituting the German left 
wing. 



112 The Strategy of the Great War 

It could have been if the French armies had been 
considerably superior to the German in numbers. But 
even adding the British contingent the French had 
no superiority. General Bernhardi had pointed out 
in his book How Germany Makes War, a companion 
piece to Germany and the Next War, that if the Germans 
elected to invade France through Belgium, they could 
well afford to allow the French armies on the Lorraine 
and Alsace front to make some progress toward the 
Rhine. This progress would throw them farther to 
the east and facilitate the success of an envelopment 
of the French left close to Paris, such as Kluck 
attempted. 

Joffre made the experiment, however. It failed 
completely. And from that time on until the armistice 
was signed the Allied armies- on the West Front were 
never again in a position to invade Germany. 

After November, 1914, the revolution in tactics 
brought about by trench warfare overweighted the 
offensive and wholly negatived the idea of obtain- 
ing a decision against the most powerful opponent. 
There was a reversion to immobile warfare — to the 
stagnation of trench operations, which were, in effect, 
siege operations conducted in the open field. With 
deep, continuous defence lines, stretching from Switzer- 
land to the North Sea, envelopment ceased to be a 



Development of Allied Strategy 113 

possibility. The only grand scale offensive which 
was practicable was an attempt at "breaking through" 
after the Napoleonic manner. 

Joffre's famous policy of "nibbling" aimed at breach- 
ing the German defence barrier at one point or another 
— trusting to some favouring combination of cir- 
cumstances to widen out the opening. But no real 
' ' break-through ' ' was effected. The French and British 
offensives of 1915, 1916, and 19 17 were all of the same 
pattern. They achieved local successes — usually at an 
excessive cost. But they never altered the situation 
on the Western Front. They could not end the stale- 
mate of rigid positional warfare. It was not until 
after the battle of Cambrai, in November, 191 7, that 
the way was opened for a revival of the warfare of 
movement. Up to that time the "destruction" of the 
German army by the French and British or the "de- 
struction" of the British and French armies by the 
Germans was practically out of the question. 

The Allies made only one real venture in grand strat- 
egy up to the midsummer of 191 8. That was the 
attempt to force the Dardanelles. Because this ven- 
ture failed — and failed unnecessarily — Winston Church- 
ill, its chief sponsor, was most unmercifully criticized. 
But it was a thoroughly sound project. The capture 
of Constantinople, early in 191 5, would have localized 



114 The Strategy of the Great War 

the war in Europe. It would have saved Russia, 
connected and greatly shortened the Allied battlefront, 
and carried the war at an early date into Hungary and 
Austria. It would have eliminated Turkey and Bul- 
garia as Teuton allies. 

The Dardanelles expedition was a ghastly disappoint- 
ment. Great Britain was probably unequal in 191 5 
to the conduct of any very highly organized offensive. 
And France had to think first of her own protection. 
But the Dardanelles forts were weak and poorly muni- 
tioned. They would have fallen and the whole face 
of the war would have been changed if the British had 
not bungled the great opportunity then put in their 
hands. 

The fiasco at Gallipoli and the fruitlessness for a 
long time of the Salonica venture led to the ascendancy 
in Allied military councils of the so-called Western 
school. This school maintained that the only hope of 
Allied victory lay in the West and that all effort should 
be concentrated there. It was necessary for France to 
employ practically all her strength on the Western 
Front, and it was more convenient for Great Britain 
to help France in the West than to carry the war else- 
where. Yet it is clear now that France and Great 
Britain alone could not have won in the West. The 
sole chance of German defeat there lay in the accumula- 



Development of Allied Strategy 115 

tion of forces sufficiently superior to break through the 
German lines. And that accumulation was possible 
only after the United States had entered the war. 

The extreme Western school cherished an illusion. 
And British military policy gradually admitted that 
illusion and began to imitate the natural German policy 
of seeking to make conquests at the expense of the 
weaker enemy powers. Great Britain's imperial interests 
were widespread. She was forced to consider Asia and 
Africa as well as Europe. She intended to absorb the 
lion's share of the German colonies. She also realized 
the advantage of establishing a claim on the outlying 
portions of the moribund Turkish Empire. 

So, after defending Egypt in 1914, Great Britain 
started in slashing away at the outer fringes of Turkey's 
possessions in Asia. One expedition was started up the 
Tigris River toward Bagdad. Another was organized 
to push across the desert of Sinai into Southern Pales- 
tine. Progress with both these ventures was slow. 
The first came to a dead halt with the British defeat 
below Ctesiphon and the retreat to Kut-el-Amara. 
What was left of the first Mesopotamian expeditionary 
army surrendered to the Turks at Kut in April, 191 6. 
Bagdad was captured, however, by General Maude 
about a year later, and with its fall Mesopotamia 
passed into British hands. Jerusalem was not reached 



ii6 The Strategy of the Great War 

until December 9, 191 7. But meanwhile Arabia had 
been detached from Turkey by British diplomacy, 
native Arabian states being established under Entente 
protection. 

These Eastern "side shows" were bitterly denounced 
by the extreme school of "Westerners" in England. 
But they proved their value later, when Allenby de- 
stroyed the Turkish armies north and north-east of 
Jerusalem in September, 191 8, and took both Damascus 
and Aleppo. That was a finishing blow to Turkey, 
which at once followed Bulgaria's example and deserted 
the Quadruple Alliance. The Eastern campaigns, 
always important from a political point of view, had 
helped to realize the true Allied strategical conception 
of a concentric attack on the Teuton Powers. They 
also enabled Great Britain to utilize about one million 
East Indian troops, who could not have been employed 
to advantage in Europe, as experience with the first 
Indian contingents in Flanders in the fall of 191 4 had 
clearly demonstrated. 

Except for the Russian offensives of 19 14 in Galicia 
and Bukowina, no serious progress was made toward 
an occupation of Austrian territory. The Russians 
nearly reached Cracow in the early days of the war 
and got across the Dukla and Lupkow passes, in the 
Carpathians. Then came the great retreat of 191 5. 



Development of Allied Strategy 117 

Brusiloff recovered a little ground in Galicia and the 
Bukowina in his brilliant offensive of 191 6. The 
Italians took Gorizia and pushed a short distance east- 
ward of the Isonzo toward Trieste. But they were 
fighting on their own soil when the war ended. 
Bulgaria's territory remained intact up to within a 
day or two of the Bulgarian armistice. 

Foch didn't have a chance to unify Allied policy 
until July, 191 8. He was eclectic in his strategy. He 
could afford to be so. By the time he got ready to 
attack he had an unlimited strategic reserve in sight. 
He could assume the offensive on all fronts without 
risk. This he did in a most brilliant and skilful man- 
ner. The final Allied campaign was marked by extra- 
ordinary confidence and energy. It aimed at the 
destruction of all the enemy armies in the field. And 
those armies, one and all, surrendered in order to escape 
destruction. Foch's generalship from July i8th on 
was without a flaw. He realized the original French 
conception of "destroying the principal enemy." 
Simultaneously he destroyed the subsidiary enemies. 

Before he became commander-in-chief, however, 
Allied strategy remained rudimentary. Equally with 
the German, Allied strategical preconceptions were 
upset by the unforeseen developments of the war. 
But since Allied policy was limited in the main to a 



ii8 The Strategy of the Great War 

four-year effort to eject the Germans from France, it 
never suffered, as German policy did, from the tempta- 
tion to adhere slavishly to pre-war plans which experi- 
ence kept showing to be impracticable. 

The Allies were guilty of many glaring faults in the 
conduct of the war. As has been pointed out, disper- 
sion of command was one of these. Diplomatic and 
military mismanagement in the Balkans was another. 
The Entente was chargeable with one very damaging 
strategic blunder — the failure to effect a contact be- 
tween the Western and the Russian fronts. But it 
made no such flagrant and irreparable error as Germany 
did when she ran amuck with the U-boat. 

Speaking broadly, the strategy of neither side was 
clearly thought out or shrewdly accommodated to 
the vicissitudes of the military situation. Germany 
profited immensely by blunders of omission on the 
part of the Allies. She lost the war because she was 
capable of a blunder of commission more unpardonable 
than any of theirs. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE FIRST MARNE v^/ 

There was no "Miracle of the Mame." The first 
battle of that name bulks large in the history of the 
war because of the dramatic glamour and moral value 
of the French victory. There has been a natural tend- 
ency to rhapsodize about it. It has been frequently 
classified as one of the decisive battles of the world — 
along with Marathon, Chalons, Poitiers, Waterloo, 
and Gettysburg. 

Yet we see now that it was not decisive in any positive 

sense. It was a battle of arrest. It merely postponed 

a decision. It did not break the German hold on France. 

For after the retreat to the Aisne the German armies 

still threatened Paris. They were to remain on French 

soil for more than four years, to reach and pass the 

Marne again, and to penetrate once more almost to 

Amiens. Paris escaped bombardment in 19 14. But 

the German heavy guns were almost in a position to 

destroy it in June and July, 1918. 

Joffre's victory has been pictured as the result of an 

119 



120 The Strategy of the Great War 

almost supernatural effort on the part of beaten, re- 
treating, shaken Allied troops. Spirit has been repre- 
sented as triumphing in some mysterious ecstatic way 
over brute force. In his interesting study of the first 
battle of the Mame, Louis Madelin, a French historian, 
has said: 

In contact with the soil from which France took 
her existence, Frenchmen will discover in themselves 
superhuman strength, like Antceus, the giant in the 
fable, who became invincible every time Hercules 
allowed him to embrace his Mother, the Earth. And, 
verily, I seem to see on September 5th a giant sud- 
denly reinvigorated, firmly set with obstinate front 
against the invader, his elbows resting securely on 
the camps of Paris and Verdun. 

There was an element of the super-heroic in the 
French stand below the Mame after the long retreat 
from the north-eastern frontier. But that stand could 
not have been made if the retreat had not been in the 
true sense a "strategic retirement," conducted with 
admirable skill and finally leading the Germans into a 
trap. 

At the time the retirement and its purpose were mis- 
understood — nowhere more completely than at German 
Grand Headquarters. All that the world in general 
could see was that the French had failed to check the 
German invasion and that the German masses were 



The First Marne 121 

pouring down through Belgium and Northern France, 
almost unmolested, toward Paris. The French Govern- 
ment transferred its headquarters to Bordeaux. There 
was a rush to get away from the threatened capital. 
The friends of the AlHed cause were in despair. 

Then Joffre's trap was sprung. Despair changed to 
hysterical elation. The Germans drew back from below 
the Marne, not so much because they were beaten in 
the field, but because they found themselves in an 
impossible position strategically. Still under the spell 
of a tremendous emotional reaction, the Alhed publics 
accepted an exaggerated view of the German failure. 
Legends of the Marne began to be created. There is 
the legend, for instance, of the marshes of St. Gond, 
in which the Prussian Guard was supposed to have 
been engulfed, as the Russians were in the marshes at 
Tannenberg. But as M. Madelin himself says: 

The marshes are not what legend (for there is 
already a legend of the Marne) have made them to 
be. No one stuck in the quagmire, for during those 
months such a thing would be impossible. After a 
very hot summer and in spite of slight rains, they 
were like a dry river-bed, in which reeds and grasses 
grew out of the grey, cracked earth. The Prussian 
Guard are forced to fight there, exposed to our artil- 
lery, and though they do not actually stick there, as 
romantic writers have described, they suffer heavily 
from our deadly fire. 



122 The Strategy of the Great War 

In dealing with the First Mame the Germans went 
to the other extreme. They refused for a long time to 
discuss the battle, or even to mention it. Their com- 
muniques of September, 1914, made no direct allusion 
to the fighting on the Ourcq, on the Petit Morin and 
Grand Morin, about Fere Champenoise, on the Ornin 
and the Aire, or east of Nancy. The very word Mame 
was taboo to the German public. And it remained so 
until near the end of the war. 

In 1 91 5 the German General Staff began the publica- 
tion of a series of descriptions of the operations in the 
field, for the instruction of German readers. It was 
called Kriegsberichte aus dem Grossen Hauptquartier , and 
comprised some twenty-five or thirty small volumes, 
in paper covers, each dealing with a separate campaign 
or battle. The first one covered the siege of Maubeuge, 
the French frontier fortress which fell early in Septem- 
ber, 1 914. The second one covered the battle of Soissons, 
which occurred in January, 191 5. Not a line, not a 
single word, was given to the Marne. Only in 191 7 
and 1 91 8 do we find German military critics freely 
admitting the fact of the first great German repulse in 
France. 

In his Deductions from the World War, written in 
1 91 7, Lieutenant-General Baron Freytag-Loringhoven 
quotes Herr Stegemann, a pro-German Swiss military 



The First Marne 123 

critic, who wrote a book about the Marne campaign. 
Freytag-Loringhoven says: 

If at that time (in August, 1914) no decisive 
victory fell to our share, and our strength proved 
insufficient to vanquish France, we must none the 
less consider that up to the Marne we had achieved 
enormous things. 

"In the very moment of accomplishment the 
completion of the battle was abandoned for far- 
reaching general reasons. . . . The battle was 
broken off by the German Supreme Comi;nand, and, 
in view of the general situation, a strategic retreat 
to a new line was ordered." 

This is the judgment of a neutral writer on the 
battle of the Marne, and certainly it would have 
taken very little to turn the scale so that victory 
might have fallen to us and a retreat been avoided. 

Thus in Germany the Marne at last attained a place 
in military history. 

The victory of September sth-Qth restored a situation 
which the French General Staff had almost allowed to 
get beyond its control. Joffre's strategy in the first 
weeks of the war proved ineffective. He adhered 
firmly to the idea that the Germans would not come 
through Belgium rapidly or in great force. He con- 
centrated the great part of his available strength on 
the Lorraine-Alsace front and held the Belgian frontier 
lightly. His plan was, apparently, to match a German 



124 The Strategy of the Great War 

attack through Belgium with a French advance toward 
the Rhine. He sent north only one army, the Fifth, 
under Lanrezac, to hold the triangle from Dinant down 
the Meuse to Namur, and thence west to Charleroi. 
It was supported on the left by a part of the British 
Expeditionary Army. 

These Allied forces were never able to make a junc- 
tion with the Belgian army, which was driven north 
from Brussels in the direction of Antwerp. They were 
also far inferior in numbers to the three armies of Kluck, 
Billow, and Hausen, which were rapidly moving west 
through Belgium. 

JofTre expected to relieve the pressure on his own weak 
left wing by striking at the German left wing from 
the southern edge of Belgium down to the Swiss border. 
Possibly he never expected the Germans to get through 
Belgium within a month. He cherefore developed a 
general offensive against the German left, beginning 
in southern Alsace. An army from Belfort pushed 
across the border, taking Altkirch on August 8th. The 
next day it occupied Mulhouse. It was promptly 
expelled from Mulhouse by the Germans. This city 
was retaken by General Pau on August 19th. But 
the second upper Alsace invasion came abruptly to an 
end when the French were defeated farther north in 
Lorraine. 



The First Marne 125 

Two armies under de Castelnau and Dubail, moving 
east from Nancy, entered the Saar Valley, to the south 
of Metz, about August 12th. They made progress for 
several days, crossing the Metz-Strasbourg railroad, 
about eighteen miles east of the frontier. Here they 
were beaten, in the battles of Sarrebourg and Mor- 
V hange, by two German armies, the one under the Crown 
Prince of Bavaria and the other under General Heerin- 
gen. By August 23d the Germans were across the 
French line and threatening Nancy. 

The third offensive was intrusted to the Fourth 
Army, under General de Langle de Gary, supported on 
the right by the Third Army, under General Ruffey, 
and the special army of Lorraine, under General Mau- 
noury. These forces amounted to thirty-one divisions, 
or about six hundred thousand men. They were to 
operate on a front from Metz north to Dinant. Op- 
posed to them were the Fifth, Fourth, and Third Ger- 
man armies, under the Crown Prince of Prussia, the 
Grand Duke of Wiirttemberg, and General Hausen, 
respectively. These armies comprised twenty-nine 
and one half divisions, and were slightly inferior, 
except in artillery, to the French. 

The German High Command was already executing 
an envelopment against the French left wing, pivoting 
the movement on Metz. This might have been disar- 



126 The Strategy of the Great War 

ranged by a successful French attack along the Belgian 
frontier, east of Sedan. De Langle de Gary's Fourth 
Army was, therefore, ordered to move into the Ardennes 
Forest, with Neufchateau as its first objective. But 
the Ardennes is an exceedingly difficult country to 
fight in. The Fourth Army got tangled up in the 
forest. Its movements were badly co-ordinated. Only 
a small number of its divisions were properly utilized, 
and they were defeated in an engagement known as 
the battle of Neufchateau. Ruffey's Third Army was 
also beaten at Virton, on the extreme southern Belgian 
border. The most ambitious of Joffre's offensives 
failed completely and the three armies engaged in it 
retreated to and beyond the Meuse. 

The reverse at Neufchateau imperilled the Fifth 
French Army holding the Dinant-Namur-Charleroi 
right angle. Hausen's army now joined with Bulow's 
and Kluck's in the swing to the west through Belgium. 
The Allied left wing — the British on the outer edge of it 
— was overlapped, and the retreat to the Mame began. 

The British Expeditionary Army, numbering onl^^ 
about seventy thousand men, suddenly found itself out- 
flanked by part of the German Second Army and all 
of the German First Army. Sir John French even 
lost touch for a while with Lanrezac. His only safety 
lay in a hurried retirement. And Lanrezac had begun 



The First Marne 127 

to retreat before he did. Once the German campaign 
of envelopment — planned by Count Schlieffen — got 
under full head the whole French plan of offence and 
defence went glimmering. Joffre could not hope to 
make a successful stand until he had found a tenable 
line and had completely regrouped his armies. 

The French General Staff sought later to construct 
a reasonable explanation of the initial defeats, which 
had left all of Northeastern France open to the enemy. 
This explanation is paraphrased by Joseph Reinach — 
the "Polybe" of Le Figaro — in his La Guerre sur le 
Front Occidental. He says : 

On the one hand, divisions were thrown too 
quickly under the enemy's fire. The men and cer- 
tain chiefs, m this first great encounter, carried 
boldness to the point of excess. An ignorance of the 
conditions of war was manifested in a contempt, 
pushed to defiance, of danger and death. On the 
other hand, weaknesses were disclosed. Some com- 
manders proved themselves real leaders in battle. 
Others lost their reputations, sometimes deserved, but 
for other qualities than those of action, which is some- 
thing else than science. Finally there were errors, both 
in the employment of infantry and in that of artillery. 
And the liaison between them was insufficient. 

Every French military critic has also testified to 
the fact that in the early part of the war the French 
heavy artillery was vastly inferior to the German. 



128 The Strategy of the Great War 

But these explanations do not cover the whole ground. 
It is clear that the French mobilization was badly 
planned in that it did not provide sufficient protection 
against an attack coming through Belgium. Even 
after the strength of the German movement across 
Belgium began to be disclosed, Joffre continued to 
minimize it and neglected to reinforce his threatened 
left wing. The French commander-in-chief had seri- 
ously underestimated the German strength, both in 
the north and in the south. He had actually played 
into the enemy's hand by developing his abortive 
Alsace-Lorraine and Ardennes offensives. 

Joffre's reputation as a soldier will rest on the cool- 
ness with which he faced the results of his own mis- 
calculations. He had to deal with a heart-breaking 
situation in the last days of August, 1914. But he 
didn't lose courage. He determined to repair his errors. 
He realized that he would have to surrender at once a 
considerable portion of Northern France. He saw that 
the German advance couldn't well be halted short of 
Paris. Had he been a leader of inferior mould he 
would have done what Ludendorff did after the Second 
Mame. He would have organized a defence on the 
line of the Oise or the Somme — or at the La Fere-Laon- 
Rheims barrier. 

He showed his real quality by deciding to put aside 



The First Marne 129 

all half-way measures, to allow the German envelop- 
ment movement to run its course and not to venture a 
battle until he could deliver it under really favourable 
conditions. He still had the utmost faith in his armies 
and he never gave over the idea of renewing the offen- 
sive. He retreated with a clear strategic purpose in 
view, although the puffed-up German High Command 
credited him merely with a desire to escape punishment. 
Thus, he wrote on August 25th, when the retirement 
began : 

The proposed offensive movement not being 
possible, ulterior operations will be effected by the 
addition of the Fourth and Fifth Corps of the British 
and fresh forces taken from our eastern area, so as 
to form on our left a mass capable of taking the offensive 
while the other armies will hold the attacks of the 
enemy in check for the time required. 

Again, on August 27th, he wrote to General de Langle 
de Gary: 

I see nothing against your remaining until to- 
morrow, the 28th, in order to consolidate your success 
and show that our withdrawal is purely strategic; 
but on the 29th every one must retreat. 

The Allied publics were puzzled and dismayed by the 
rapidity of the Allied withdrawal from Northeastern 
France. The British, on the extreme left, who were 



130 The Strategy of the Great War 

most exposed to Kluck's turning's movement, retreated 
for five days and nights with hardly a pause. Then, 
south of the Somme, the Allied left wing was measur- 
ably out of peril. But Joffre was not ready to give 
battle on the Somme, the Oise, or the Aisne. So the 
general retirement continued four days longer, until 
the French left wing rested on the fortified zone of 
Paris. 

The Germans were also unable to understand why 
the Allies didn't turn and fight. Kluck said in 
November, 191 8, that he expected an obstinate resist- 
ance on his front after the battles of Mons and Charle- 
roi. Instead he had difficulty in keeping in touch with 
the retreating Allied forces. The German High Com- 
.mand was thrown off its balance by the appearance 
of French and British disorganization. It jumped to 
the conclusion that it was on the verge of a repetition 
of the elder Moltke's easy successes in 1870. It already 
saw France vanquished and the black, white, and red 
standard floating from the Eiffel Tower. 

Overconfidence made the German General Staff 
incautious. It had no thought of a renewal of the 
French offensive. It allowed the German colum.ns to 
outtravel their heavier artillery and their transport. 
The Germans were marching away from their bases. 
The French were retiring toward theirs. Nor did the 



The First Mame 131 

German Staff appear to be aware that from September 
1st on the strategical situation was changing rapidly 
in favour of the French. 

The Schlieffen envelopment which Kluck and Biilow 
were charged with executing was feasible enough so 
long as the Allied left wing remained "in the air." It 
did remain so while the British were north of the Oise. 
Kluck's right then overreached the Allied left. His 
outposts entered Amiens. Most of his troops came 
down to the Oise crossings to the west of Compiegne. 
There were no Allied troops in that region to stop 
them. 

But when they approached the fortified zone of 
Paris conditions altered. The German right wing 
armies could not invest Paris. For the German ob- 
jective was not Paris, but the French armies. They 
could not isolate or mask Paris by passing around 
it on the west. Kluck's army was not large enough 
for such an operation. He may have thought that 
Paris would be evacuated by its garrison, as it had 
been by the French Government. After he reached 
the north-eastern outskirts of the capital and found no 
sign of evacuation he conceived the idea of merely 
skirting Paris and turning south-east in pursuit of the 
British, who had retreated across the Grand Morin to 
a position below Coulommiers. Possibly he expected 



132 The Strategy of the Great War 

to occupy Paris after the Allies had been driven south 
of the Seine. 

The painfully meagre French bulletins in the last 
days of August ajid the first days of September merely 
disclosed an uninterrupted retreat. Sedan Day was 
at hand. The world looked forward to another Sedan. 
Yet it was becoming apparent even then that the Ger- 
man envelopment movement had failed. On Septem- 
ber 4th, two days before the date on which JofEre was 
planning to begin his new offensive, I wrote in an 
article, published in the New York Tribune of September 
5th: 

From the point of view of strategy the French 
position is by no means desperate. An inferior 
force could hold it against a superior one, and from 
it an equal or superior force could deal a fatal blow 
at an over-extended enemy. 

That was before Maunoury's flanking movement 
east of Paris had started. On September 6th I wrote: 

The German turning movement, which appar- 
ently aimed at getting between the Allied forces and 
Paris at some point north-north-east of the capital 
failed of its purpose when the Allies retreated so far 
that their extreme left wing rested on the Paris forts. 
Now the turning army has headed east and away 
from Paris, probably for the purpose of helping to 
deliver a converging attack on the Allied centre. 



The First Marne 133 

Again, on September 8th, when only meagre reports 
had reached the United States of the developments 
east of Paris, I said {Tribune of September 9th) : 

The weakness of the German position is that it 
is now outflanked on the right, from which direction 
the Allies are attacking von Kluck and trying to get 
into his rear. If the Allies can hold along their 
curved-back left centre the situation will be very 
favourable to them from the tactical point of view, 
since a successful flank and rear attack from the 
direction of Meaux would cut the present German 
communications north and compel a hurried retreat 
toward Belgium and Luxemburg. 

The German First Army had, in fact, been placed 
in what Joffre described in an order issued by him 
on September 4th as "a foolhardy position." It had 
entered the French trap. It was exposed to an attack 
out of Paris by an army whose presence in that neigh- 
bourhood the German Staff did not suspect. Joffre 
had organized the Sixth French Army, transferring 
Maunoury from the Army of Lorraine to command it. 
This force was massed behind the Paris fortifications. 
It advanced east of Meaux on September 5th to attack 
Kluck's flank and rear. Another new army had been 
created under Foch and assigned to the French left 
centre. 

The Allied armies on September 6th stood in this 



134 The Strategy of the Great War 

order from Paris to Verdun: The Sixth, under Mau- 
noury, on the Ourcq, facing east; the British Ex- 
peditionary Army, under Sir John French, below 
Coulommiers, facing north ; the Fifth Army, now under 
Franchet d'Esperey, who had replaced Lanrezac, stretch- 
ing as far as Sezanne; the Ninth, under Foch, from 
Sezanne to Camp de Mailly; the Fourth, under de 
Langle de Cary, from Sompuis to Sermaize; the Third, 
under Sarrail, who had replaced Ruffey, bending in 
a sharp angle from Revigny to Souilly. Verdun was 
held by its permanent garrison. Opposite the Allies 
from Coulommiers to Verdun were the first five Ger- 
man armies, under Kluck, Biilow, Hansen, the Grand 
Duke of Wurttemberg, and the Crown Prince of Prus- 
sia. Kluck had left only a single reserve corps of 
forty thousand men to guard his rear toward Paris. 

Maunoury's attack on this corps put the German 
First Army in peril. But its commander extricated it 
with remarkable skill. He had been caught napping. 
He pulled free by daring generalship. Leaving only a 
fraction of his army confronting Sir John French, he 
hurried the rest of it back toward the Ourcq and suc- 
ceeded in fighting Maunoury to a standstill. On Sep- 
tember 9th he had bent Maunoury's left wing back 
toward Paris. But the next day he was in full retreat. 
His own retrograde movement had dislocated Billow's 



The First Marne 135 

line, on his left. And Billow's retirement opened the 
gap still further east through which Foch drove with 
part of the Ninth Army, causing the defeat and hurried 
retirement of Hausen. 

Having failed absolutely to envelop the Allied left 
the German High Command had tried a "breaking 
through" operation in the centre. Here the action of 
La Fere-Champenoise was fought, in which Foch, with 
help from d'Esperey, held on grimly for four days 
against German attacks, and on the fourth turned 
and routed the enemy. 

As a battle the First Marne has many confusing 
features. It represented a French counter-offensive. 
Yet throughout the greater part of it the French fought 
on the defensive. Of the five French armies only two 
were used to the limit — the Sixth and the Ninth. The 
British hardly fought at all. On the German side 
only two of the five armies, Kluck's and Hausen's, 
were fully engaged. 

Moreover, Joffre's strategical plans were frustrated. 
An exceptional opportunity was lost through lack of 
close co-operation between Maunoury and Sir John 
French and by the latter's failure to contain a larger 
part of Kluck's forces below the Marne. The envelop- 
ment which Joffre attempted was only a halfway suc- 
cess. Faults in the execution of his orders prevented 



136 The Strategy of the Great War 

him from taking advantage of "the foolhardy position" 
of the German First Army. 

Considerations of this sort prompted the Germans 
to minimize their defeat at the Mame and even to 
deny defeat there. The battle for them was one of 
extrication from a predicament due to their own heed- 
lessness and overconfidence. They accomplished the 
strategical extrication at which they aimed. They 
were beaten in the field at only one or two points. 
Their losses were probably less than those of the Allies. 
Virtually no German prisoners or guns were taken. 

The German armies on the right wing retreated 
thirty miles or more. But they were able to stop at 
the Aisne and to make good their grip on Northern 
France. This is the sort of case made out for the drawn 
battle view of the Marne which was held by most 
German critics and by pro-German neutrals, like the 
Swiss critic, Stegemann. 

This view, however, fails to take into account both 
the extraordinary moral and the substantial military 
consequences of the German defeat. The Marne 
restored Allied confidence. France and Great Britain 
needed time to develop their strength. The German 
failure in the Mame campaign pointed to a long war. 
And a long war was to the advantage of the Western 
Allies. Germany counted on the Cannae which Schlief- 



The First Marne i37 

fen had planned. But there was to be in the west 
no German Cannae — no Sedan, no Vionville, Gravelotte, 
or St. Privat. France had not been lost. But the 
world continued to think mistakenly that some im- 
penetrable "Miracle of the Marne" had saved her. 

In the military sense the German High Command 
had bungled its initial offensive of the war only less 
startlingly than Joffre had bungled his. The Germans 
were left with some substantial evidences of success in 
their hands, having acquired an immensely valuable 
foothold in Belgium and France. But they suffered 
a tremendous loss in military prestige. Their offensive 
came to grief under circumstances so painful that by 
common consent, both at the front and in the rear, 
they were made the object of a German conspiracy oi 
silence. 

Freytag-Loringhoven says in his Deductions from the 
World War that the German High Command didn't 
have sufficient forces to carry through Schlieffen's 
envelopment plan. He argues that another German 
army should have been organized, "disposed in echelon 
behind the German right wing." That is to say, Kluck 
should have been supported at the Marne by an addi- 
tional German army which would have taken care of 
any attack coming east out of Paris. Yet the German 
High Command had many disengaged troops. The 



138 The Strategy of the Great War 

idea of using them to extend the German right never 
occurred to it. 

Moreover, Count Schlieffen's plan also called for an 
envelopment of the French right in Lorraine. This 
part of the programme never came to anything. The 
German armies on the Lorraine border were defeated 
decisively by Dubail and de Castelnau at the same 
time that the armies which had pivoted from Metz 
were being defeated between Paris and Verdun. 

The Mame campaign showed that the German 
military machine in 191 4 was not what it was in 1870- 
71. It could crack on occasion. The Germans had 
broken into Belgium and Northern France with extra- 
ordinar}^ ease. But they could not "steam roller" 
their way to Paris. They would now have to fight to 
stay where they were — to hold the line of the Aisne east 
to Verdun, and to extend that line up to the North Sea. 

In spite of the check below the Mame the German 
position in France in mid-September, 19 14, was still 
advantageous and formidable. But in comparison 
with what it might have been it seemed fettered and 
unpromising. The discouragement which prevailed at 
German Grand Headquarters after the retreat to the 
Aisne, and which forecast the younger Moltke's retire- 
ment, was a fair measure of the shock to German hopes 
involved in Joffre's sensational "come back" victory. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE BATTLE OF FLANDERS 

With the Allied publics the emotional reaction to 
the first battle of the Marne was so prodigious as to 
obscure its actual military results. Joffre was heroized. 
Yet from the military point of view what he had done 
was only to repair in part the errors he had committed 
in the opening weeks of the war. He had skilfully 
taken advantage of mistakes on the German side 
comparable to his own. 

While he remained commander-in-chief of the French 
armies French writers continued to take a complacent 
view of his strategy. Gabriel Hanotaux, historian and 
former Minister of Foreign Affairs, who has written 
brilliantly and voluminously about the war, reflects 
that view. He insists that Joffre's plan of operations 
was adequate from the start. This judgment is based 
on the assumption that the French commander-in- 
chief achieved his general purpose, which was to 
prevent the envelopment of the French armies under- 
taken by the younger Moltke, according to Count 

139 



HO The Strategy of the Great War 

Schlieffen's plans. "The German armies," says Hano- 
taux, in an appreciation of Joffre, "did not turn the 
French armies, which was their objective. On the 
contrary, they were enveloped themselves." 

But this pleasing theory leaves out of account what 
happened before Kluck heedlessly plunged into the 
trap set for him east of Paris. After 191 6 French 
opinion began to measure more accurately the conse- 
quences of Joffre's blunders in August, 1914. In 
volume iii. of his La Grande Guerre sur le Front Occiden- 
tal (written in 191 7 and published in 1918), General 
Palat (Pierre Lehautcourt) thus answers M. Hano- 
taux's argument: 

The (French) offensive in Belgium, on the Sambre 
and in the Ardennes, lasted from August 21st to 
August 23d. After August 24th we were everywhere 
in full retreat. The national territory was violated in 
several directions. And on the evening of the 25th 
we had already allowed the enemy to occupy a 
zone — very important because of its extent, its 
wealth, and its population — of that France so pa- 
tiently formed by the labour of so many generations. 
By September 5th our armies were thrown south of 
the Marne, and it was a question of carrying them 
south of the Seine. Paris was uncovered and at the 
mercy of the German armies, and the government 
had been transferred to Bordeaux. 

How can we admire a strategy whose results still 
weigh upon us after four years of the most frightful 



The Battle of Flanders 141 

war, abounding in sacrifices of every sort ? We shall 
not cease to repeat what many others, who have 
closely observed the course of events, also think. 
The reverses of the beginning of the war would never 
have been produced in all their terrible amplitude 
had it not been for initial errors committed in the 
plan of concentration as well as in the plan of opera- 
tions adopted by our High Command. 

That concentration was made at first exclusively 
on the Franco-German frontier, in spite of so many 
signs which indicated the violation of Belgian ter- 
ritory. The High Command long persisted in its 
error, in place of repairing it with the promptitude 
which circumstance demanded. It even had the idea 
of undertaking — twice in Alsace and then in Lor- 
raine — parasitic offensives which it knew couldn't 
lead to anything, even under favourable conditions. 
Finally, after having half way overcome the bulk of 
the faults committed in the concentration, it launched 
tardily in Belgium a counter-offensive which was to 
be attempted against forces more considerable than 
ours and whose success, in the circumstances, was 
assuredly impossible. How can we applaud strategic 
dispositions so scattering, which ended finally, 
after our pretending to impose our will on the enemy, 
in his will being imposed on us? 

Impressive and inspiring as the victory of the Marne 
was, it could not restore an equilibrium on the Western 
Front. It could not expunge the consequences of the 
earlier French failure. Within ten days after the battle 
the Allies found out that they were not on the road 



142 The Strategy of the Great War 

to recover the valuable industrial districts of North- 
eastern France. They also discovered that they had 
not even wrested the offensive out of the hands of the 
Germans. 

Kluck stopped on the Aisne above Soissons. Biilow 
halted a little north of Rheims. They both were 
counter-attacking about September i8th. Further east, 
in the Argonne region, the armies of the Grand Duke of 
Wiirttemberg and the Crown Prince of Prussia pressed 
south again a considerable distance. South of Verdun 
a German force from Metz took Fort Camp des Romains 
and St. Mihiel, on the Meuse, creating the famous St. 
Mihiel salient, which remained invulnerable until the 
Americans suddenly wiped it off the map in one day 
in September, 191 8. 

After September 20, 1914, the chief problem for 
both armies in the West was to link up the front north- 
east of Paris with the Belgian front. For Great Brit- 
ain as well as for France it was imperative to cover 
the Channel ports, which were to serve as the chief 
bases of the British Expeditionary Forces. It was 
equally important for the Germans, giving over for the 
present their dream of capturing the French capital, to 
round out their occupation of Belgium, take Antwerp, 
establish themselves on the North Sea coast of Belgium, 
and, if possible, to seize Dunkirk and Calais. 



The Battle of Flanders i43 

Joffre made the first move in the so-called "race 
for the sea" by extending his left wing north in the 
direction of Amiens and compelling Kluck to follow 
suit: But Joffre's strategy was defensive rather than 
offensive in character. He was seeking to get north 
chiefly to protect the Channel bases and to extricate 
the Belgian army, which was about to be penned up 
in Antwerp. 

Antwerp was again to demonstrate the vulnerability 
of the old-fashioned fortress. As soon as the German 
position on the Aisne was stabilized Moltke turned his 
attention to the isolated Belgian forces which had 
retired from Brussels to Antwerp about the middle of 
August. The Germans in Belgium were still well south 
of the Scheldt River, holding the line of the Meuse 
and the line through Brussels to Mons. King Albert's 
troops held the fortified zone about Antwerp, and still 
had an avenue of retreat west along the north bank of 
the Scheldt to Ghent, Ostend, and French Flanders. 
But just then there were no Allied armies in that region 
with which they could make a junction. 

Joffre at first aimed at taking St. Quentin and threat- 
ening the German communications with Maubeuge. 
But his troops, working east from Amiens, were soon 
checked by Kluck. They lost Roye, Peronne, and 
Bapaume, and were crowded back to the line of Arras, 



144 The Strategy of the Great War 

Lens, and La Bassee. Lille was recovered for a brief 
period and then lost again. Everywhere the Allies 
were thrust back from the road leading to Ghent and 
Antwerp. 

The "race for the sea" caused a complete displace- 
ment of the original distribution of forces in the West. 
Both sides depleted the Alsace-Lorraine front. De 
Castelnau was transferred to Picardy; Foch's Ninth 
Army and the British Expeditionary Army were sent 
to Flanders. Crown Prince Rupprecht's Bavarian 
army was shifted to Belgium and remained there for 
the next four years. On the Alsace-Lorraine border 
the war lapsed into a trench deadlock. This was never 
interrupted south of St. Mihiel. In the Meuse region 
it was broken only once— by the long drawn-out battle of 
Verdun. Events had corrected the overconcentration 
of the French on the Franco-German boundary and vindi- 
cated, from the strictly military point of view, the German 
choice of Belgium as the real sally-port into France. 

By the end of September it was evident that the 
French and British armies could not relieve Antwerp. 
They had reached the neighbourhood of Lille and 
Ypres. But they had been barred from the Scheldt 
Valley. The only question now was whether they 
could intervene sufficiently to extricate the Belgian 
army still in Antwerp. 



The Battle of Flanders HS 

The siege of the great Belgian citadel made startling 
progress. It lasted in all only about ten days. The 
Belgian army should have been started earlier on its 
retreat to Bruges and Ostend. Its departure was 
delayed by an ill-advised attempt on the part of 
Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty in the 
Asquith Cabinet, to prolong the defence. He visited 
Antwerp and then sent over a half -trained British naval 
brigade to reinforce the garrison. The elaborate outer 
fortifications proved as useless, under the fire of the 
big Krupp and Skoda howitzers, as the fortifications 
of Liege, Namur, and Maubeuge, had been. The 
city itself was shelled on October 7th. It surrendered 
on October 9th, the remnant of the garrison retiring 
across the border into Holland. 

King Albert's army was hurried in its retreat and 
lost a division on the way to Bruges, the Germans 
crossing the Scheldt and crowding the Belgian rear- 
guard into Dutch territory. Bruges could not be held. 
Neither could Ostend. The retiring Belgians were 
not able to unite with the French and British until 
they had crossed the Yser River and filled the gap in 
the Allied line between Ypres and Nieuport. 

The capture of Antwerp, Bruges, Ostend, and Zee- 
brugge and the occupation of all but a narrow strip 
of Belgian territory ended the second phase of the war 



146 The Strategy of the Great War 

of movement in the western field. Fixed trench fines 
now ran from the Swiss border to the North Sea. The 
long deadlock of the war of positions was approaching. 
The battle of the Marne had interrupted German 
progress in the south. But it had not sufficed to check 
it in the north. Allied expectations in the glow of the 
first days following Joffre's victory had not been re- 
alized. It had been hoped that the German retreat 
from the Marne would continue and that the German 
hold on Northern France and Belgium would be shaken 
loose. It would have been if the First Marne had been 
a decisive battle in any positive sense. 

As a matter of fact the Allies lost ground, instead 
of gaining it, from the time thfe Germans halted at the 
Aisne. The German High Command regained the 
strategical offensive in the latter half of September 
and retained it through the rest of 19 14. It frustrated 
the main purpose of Joffre's northward flanking move- 
ment, which was to manoeuvre the German armies 
back toward the Sambre and the Meuse, to relieve 
Antwerp, and to break the German hold on Belgium. 
Joffre was trying to nullify the results of the initial 
German successes in the north, due largely to his own 
faulty dispositions and movements in the first weeks 
of the war. He did not succeed in this. On the con- 
trary, the Germans were able to gather the full fruits 



The Battle of Flanders H7 

of these early successes, overrunning Western Belgium, 
seizing the Belgian North Sea harbours, Lille, Cambrai, 
Douai, and Lens, destroying Arras and threatening 
the approaches to the Channel ports. 

The Germans were able to exploit the military ad- 
vantages accruing from their first onrush into Belgium 
largely because of their more advanced mobilization. 
In August they had put about 1,500,000 men into the 
first line in the west. The French were then little 
inferior in strength. But the German reserves became 
available more quickly and in larger numbers. Many 
newly formed German divisions, of fairly good quality, 
were rushed into Belgium. In October and Novem- 
ber German superiority in man power became pro- 
nounced. There had always been a decided superiority 
in artillery, in machine guns, and in munitions. 

To oppose these new German formations the Allies 
had to throw in a strange medley of reinforcements — 
French marines, Moroccans, Algerians, Senegalese, 
British Sikhs, and other East Indian contingents, the 
first Canadian regiments, and English territorials. The 
Allied line was thinnest at its northern end. And 
against this end the next German offensive on a grand 
scale was to be directed. 

Having been balked in the first drive for Paris, the 
German High Command conceived the idea of com- 



148 The Strategy of the Great War 

pensating itself by a drive for the Channel ports. The 
conquest of Belgium had given new value to those ports 
as German sea bases. Antwerp now furnished a head- 
quarters for German submarine activities within easy 
range of the English Channel. Napoleon once de- 
scribed Antwerp as "a pistol pointed at the heart of 
England." This was a rhetorical exaggeration. He 
was never able to load or discharge the pistol. Nor 
would Antwerp have been of any special value to 
Germany for surface naval operations. 

But the submarine had now startingly demonstrated 
its value. From the day, late in September, 19 14, 
when Lieutenant Weddigen, commanding the U-9, 
sank the British warships Hogue, Cressy, and Aboukir 
within the space of half an hour, the possibility of some 
offensive action against England had begun to stir 
the German imagination. The main British fleet was 
forced to retire to a safe distance north of Scotland. 
The protection of the British lines of communication 
across the Channel to Boulogne and Havre was left 
to light vessels. To destroy those communications, 
both by submarine attack and by pushing along the 
coavSt to Dunkirk, Calais, and Boulogne, would not 
only produce consternation in England, but would 
gravely compromise the Allied position in Northern 
France. 



The Battle of Flanders H9 

The Germans also intended to use the submarine as 
a commerce destroyer and blockader. Possession of 
Bruges, with its canals to Zeebrugge and Ostend, gave 
them, with Antwerp, an admirable operating base, 
close to the main lines of EngHsh commerce. If they 
could also seize the French coast opposite Dover they 
might hope practically to seal Dover Strait. 

A slight delay in organizing the new contingents 
lost Germany her best chance to reach Dunkirk and 
Calais. Early in October the Allied left wing rested 
on Bethune. German cavalry occupied the valley of 
the Lys River, north of Bethune, with advance guards 
beyond Bailleul. The British Expeditionary Army 
left the Aisne on October 5th and began to detrain a 
few days later at St. Omer. From that point it marched 
north-east to form a junction with the Belgian army, 
which was retreating from Antwerp, covered by British 
cavalry under General Rawlinson. 

The German cavalry in the Lys Valley could not 
hold their ground and retired east of Ypres to Roulers, 
the British gaining the line from Armentieres north 
through Ypres to Dixmude. Before the German con- 
centration in the north was completed all the gaps in 
the Allied line to the sea had closed. 

The German attempt to break through began on 
October 17th and lasted until November 17th. It 



150 The Strategy of the Great War 

was made by probably six hundred thousand troops, 
most of them new divisions, although they were sup- 
ported by Rupprecht's Bavarian army, and the Prus- 
sian Guard was hurried up from the south eventually 
to take part in the five-day assault on Ypres. 

German tactics had not yet changed. Heavy mass 
formations were used in attack, and the casualties corre- 
sponded with the ardour and courage of the troops, 
which all observers admitted to be high. Germany 
was at that time in a hysterical ferment of rage against 
England. It was the day of Ernst Lissauer's Hymn 
of Hate with its refrain 

We have all but a single hate. 
We have all but a single foe: 
England. 

It was the day of the first Zeppelin attacks on 
British cities and of the first naval bombardments of 
Britain's open coast towns. The effects of this obses- 
sion were shown in the brutal proclamations of Crown 
Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria to the German Sixth 
Army. They were also manifested, perhaps, in the 
sustained fury of the German attacks. 

The first blow fell on the Belgians and French who 
held the lines from Dixmude to the sea. Here Generals 
Foch and Grossetti performed wonders. They were 
greatly outnumbered, but held on by utilizing all the 



The Battle of Flanders 151 

advantages of a terrain strikingly adapted to defence. 
In this flat, soggy region artillery was handicapped and 
the German infantry was cut to pieces advancing in 
masses across the open. By sheer weight the Germans 
finally took Dixmude and passed the Yser River. But 
they were stopped when the Belgians dammed the river 
near its mouth, where British warships covered their 
positions, and flooded the lowlands. This overflow 
barrier proved effective for the rest of the war. 

Further south the Germans tried, early in November, 
to crush the famous Ypres saHent. They drove the 
British back from the neighbourhood of Roulers and 
took the heights east and south-east of Ypres. But 
they were never able to reach the city itself— a mass 
of ruins— which held out then just as it held out later, 
though in dire straits, against the German attacks of 
April, 191 5, and April, 191 8. Apparently indefensible, 
commanded on two sides by the Passchendaele and 
Messines ridges, it was nevertheless defended by the 
sheer grit of that army which in the early days of the 
war William II had scornfully characterized as "con- 
temptible." 

The battle of Flanders cost the Germans vastly 
greater losses than the first battle of the Marne did. 
It was the death-blow to the old German system of 
battle tactics. It proved that dense masses of infantry 



152 The Strategy of the Great War 

could not of their own strength break through trench 
Hnes held by much inferior forces. Modern weapons 
had too greatly augmented the power of the defensive 
to beat down frontal infantry attacks. Henceforth — 
at least on the West Front, where the quality of the op- 
posing troops was fairly equal — frontal attacks would 
prove futile until some new devices had been found 
for restoring superiority to the offensive. The new prob- 
lems of trench deadlock had to be faced and solved. 
And the real solution was not to come until three years 
later — at the battle of Cambrai. 

Lieutenant-General Baron Freytag-Loringhoven in- 
timates, in his Deductions from the World War, that 
the Germans lost the battles of the Yser and of Ypres 
because they used too many new formations. "These 
new troops," he holds, "could not be equal to cop- 
ing with the difficult conditions which prevailed at 
Ypres." 

He says further: 

In their case the period of training was not really 
adequate to transform them into thoroughly efficient 
battle-troops. The experience of the officers, very 
few of whom were on the active list at the time, with 
all their good will, was not really adequate and the 
same was true of their physical fitness. This applies 
equally to a large proportion of the men in the ranks, 
that is to say, of the young war volunteers. They 



The Battle of Flanders i53 

had excellent qualities and were filled with the 
purest patriotic enthusiasm, but this could not com- 
pensate for the lack of soldierly discipline and physi- 
cal hardening which can be acquired only in the 
course of a thorough military training. 

A curious apology! Opposed to the Germans in 
Flanders was a motley force of very uneven quality 
■ — of many races, tongues, and degrees of military ex- 
perience. It fought day in and day out, with only the 
scantiest reserves. The Germans had ample reserves. 
They also sent to Belgium Crown Prince Rupprecht's 
first-line Bavarian army and the Prussian Guard. 
If the Channel ports were worth taking sound leader- 
ship would have forbidden an attempt to take them 
with second-class troops, while better troops were 
holding the line from Arras down to Belfort, on which 
the fighting had died down. 

Here again, as at the Marne, the German High Com- 
mand undervalued the enemy. Freytag-Loringhoven 
criticizes Joffre for not extending his line north more 
rapidly. But Joffre had relatively small reserves on 
hand in October, 191 4. He was forced to do the best 
he could with what he had. The German High Com- 
mand, on the contrary, had a choice. It cannot excuse 
itself for failure on the ground that it preferred to 
employ new formations instead of seasoned ones. 



154 The Strategy of the Great War 

The Flanders campaign ended, as the Marne cam- 
paign did, in a big German reverse. The second Ger- 
man bid for a decisive success on the West Front failed. 
The Allies, rallying in the nick of time, saved the Chan- 
nel ports, as they had saved Paris two months before. 
It was demonstrated for a second time that Germany 
had only a gambler's chance to overrun and conquer 
France. 

But again the Allied victory was only negative in 
results. It was another victory of arrest. It left 
with the Germans the fruits of a second offensive cam- 
paign. Practically all of Belgium was lost to the 
Entente. Germany secured the strip of seacoast which 
she coveted as a base for submarine warfare and for 
air raids on England. She also obtained a free hand 
for her experiment of segregating the Flemings from 
the Walloons, claiming kinship in race and language 
with the former and attempting to segregate them in 
a pro-Teuton Flemish state. The iron and steel in- 
dustries centering about Liege were taken over by the 
German Government. Belgian banking resources were 
attached. Belgian labour was impressed and deported 
beyond the Rhine and the non-labouring population 
was left dependent for food on the charity of neutrals 
and the Allies. 

After the Flanders campaign Belgium's existence 



The Battle of Flanders i55 

as an independent state was suspended. The German 
inroads into Northern France also had very grave 
consequences. Ninety per cent, of the iron ore pro- 
duced in France came from the Briey and Longwy 
basins, which were both overrun by Germany before 
the battle of the Marne. Seventy per cent, of the 
coal mined in France came from the Valenciennes basin, 
lost to the Germans in the Flanders campaign. The 
steel, textile, and sugar industries of France were con- 
centrated largely in the invaded regions. The Germans 
plundered and devastated these regions. Northern 
France suffered damage under German occupation es- 
timated at $13, 000 , 000 , 000 . B elgium suffered t o the ex- 
tent of $2, 000, 000, 000 in devastation and $2,000,000,000 
raore in spoliation and military tribute. 

These penalties were incidental to the purely military 
penalties. The Germans secured a foothold deep 
within the enemy's territory from which they were not- 
dislodged until the closing days of the war. Even 
when the armistice was signed more than three fourths 
of the German western armies were on foreign soil. 
The positions which they had seized in Northern 
France were admirably suited to a long defensive cam- 
paign. They were equally suited to new offensive 
operations against Paris and the Channel ports. 

If the Marne and Flanders offensives had failed to 



156 The Strategy of the Great War 

bring anything like a decision over the AlHes they had 
at least carried the war far beyond the German frontier 
(except in Lorraine and Alsace), put staggering bur- 
dens on France and Belgium, and assured Germany 
complete strategic freedom by safeguarding her western 
border. 

It was evident by the end of November, 191 4, that 
neither antagonist was able to exhaust or crush the 
other in the West. Each had underestimated the other's 
strength. Moltke lost a great strategical opportunity 
at the Mame. J off re lost one after the German retreat 
to the Aisne. Freytag-I>oringhoven makes this curious 
admission : 

This war has furnished instances where the en- 
velopment of a whole host might have been effected 
and would have had far-reaching consequences. 
Such an opportunity was presented to our opponents 
on the Western Front after the battle of the Marne. 
By making use of their convenient and efficient 
railway network and their numerous columns of 
motor cars they might have hurled at the proper 
moment powerful forces against the right flank of 
the German army, and thereby prevented us from 
establishing our positions on the Aisne and to the 
west of the Belgian frontier. Since, however, they 
had not achieved a tactical success at the Marne at 
all, they lacked the strength and capacity for such 
an undertaking. They pressed their attack only in 
a frontal direction. The German forces at once 



The Battle of Flanders i57 

resumed in part an offensive attitude and by this 
means arrested the progress of the enemy forces 
opposed to them. They strengthened the right 
wing of their army and were always able to oppose 
adequate forces to the striking movement of the 
French pursuing army when the latter at length 
(but too late) set itself in motion. 

Neither side had in the West in 19 14 the leadership or 
the numbers with which to establish a real superiority. 
The Germans, therefore, wisely decided at the end of 
1 9 14 to turn to the East — in spite of the fact that the 
results of the Western fighting had been, on the whole, 
largely in their favour. They had a freedom of choice 
and they sought a field in which a decision promised 
to be quicker and easier. The AlHes had little choice 
and slight strategic freedom. The French were tied 
down to home defence. The British lacked the con- 
fidence, and to some extent the numbers, to turn away 
resolutely from the West. The Gallipoli expedition 
of 191 5 represented only a lame and hastily improvised 
effort to do so. 

The advantages of Germany's geographical position 
now came into full play. She sealed up her West Front 
and took up the more vital and promising task of 
destroying Russia. 



CHAPTER IX 
Russia's early successes 

Russia was the chief puzzle of the first year of the 
war. Up to May i, 191 5, she had apparently accom- 
plished more than any other of the belligerents. She 
had almost held her own against Germany. She had 
won a striking series of victories over Austria-Hungary. 
She had taken more than three hundred thousand 
prisoners, including the Przemysl garrison of 130,000 
men. 

Russia's line of mobilization ran north and south, 
through Brest-Litovsk, near the eastern boundary of 
Poland. That line was her true military frontier, 
Poland jutted out from it in an almost indefensible 
salient. The Russians had an advanced front on the 
Vistula, from Ivangorod north through Warsaw to 
Novogeorgievsk ; thence turning north-east through 
Ossowiec and Augustovo to Kovno, on the Niemen. 
All of Poland to the west of this front was conceded to 
the Germans. 

This* advanced line was endangered by the fact that 

158 



Russia's Early Successes 159 

Poland was inclosed on three sides by German and 
Austrian territory. Warsaw could be taken in the 
rear by an enemy advance out of Galicia toward Lublin. 
The Austro-Hungarians took that route in August, 
1 9 14, getting as far as Krasnik. Their strategy was 
good. It failed only because the Russians countered 
with an offensive in Eastern Galicia which broke 
through the Austro-Hungarian front about Lemberg 
and drove Francis Joseph's armies in disorder back 
across the San River and the Carpathians. 

In the first nine months of the war the Russians 
pushed their lines west well beyond Warsaw, in Poland, 
and almost to Cracow in Western Galicia. They held 
more enemy territory in the East than the Germans 
had overrun in the West. The Germans occupied 
about 8000 square miles of France and ii,ooo square 
miles of Belgium. But Russia had not only taken 
firm possession of most of Poland, but had captured 
35,000 square miles of Austrian territory in Galicia 
and Bukowina. 

Many causes contributed to Russia's brilliant show- 
ing. Her mobilization was already under way when 
the war began. She had started to organize her south- 
western front as soon as it was evident that Austria- 
Hungary was trying to pick a quarrel with Serbia. 
Her military preparations were really more advanced 



i6o The Strategy of the Great War 

than Austria-Hungary's were. Her armies in the 
opening weeks of the war easily outnumbered those of 
Austria-Hungar>\ 

Teuton diplomatic blunders had helped Russia. 
Rumania was long an adjunct to the Triple Alliance. 
Her sovereign was a Hohenzollern. Her people dis- 
liked and feared Russia, which had treated Rumania 
very shabbily after the war with Turkey in 1877-78, 
depriving her of Bessarabia. The Rumanians looked 
to Berlin for protection against Slav ambitions. But 
policy at Vienna was largely controlled by Hungary, 
and Hungary was notorious as an oppressor of her 
subject peoples, among whom were the Rumanians 
of Transylvania. The Rumanian Government could 
not remain indifferent to the wrongs of Latin kinsmen 
across the Hungarian border. So an intense friction 
developed between Vienna and Bucharest. 

In the second Balkan War Austria-Hungary sided 
with Bulgaria and sought to annul the terms of peace 
imposed on Bulgaria by Rumania, Serbia, Greece, and 
Montenegro. That interference detached Rumania 
from the Triple Alliance. Her relations with Russia 
became more friendly, and it was plain from the begin- 
ning of the war that she would either remain neutral 
or side with the Allies. 

Russia was therefore relieved from the necessity of 



Russia's Early Successes i6i 

guarding the Bessarabian frontier, just as France had 
been relieved by Italy's alienation from the Triple 
Alliance of the necessity of guarding Nice and Savoy. 
Austria-Hungary, on the contrary, not only had to 
fight Serbia on the south, but also to keep watch on 
Rumania and Italy, her former allies. All Russia's 
forces in the south could be concentrated for an invasion 
of Bukowina and Galicia. 

The Russian army had learned some hard lessons 
in the Japanese War. General Kuropatkin, though a 
non-aggressive commander-in-chief, was an intelHgent 
soldier. After the Japanese War he prepared reports 
for the government in which he frankly exposed the 
deficiencies of the Russian military system. Steps 
were taken to remedy some of these. The Japanese 
War had been intensely unpopular. But even before 
the Balkan wars there was a striking rebirth in Russia 
of nationalistic and Pan-Slavic feeling, under the influ- 
ence of which the military establishment was expanded 
and materially improved. New and friendly relations 
with Great Britain had reawakened Russian ambitions 
in the Balkans and aroused fresh hopes of a triumphant 
entry into Constantinople. 

Russia saw trouble with Austria-Hungary and Ger- 
many coming and was at least superficially prepared 
for it. When the war clouds broke the Czar had a 



1 62 The Strategy of the Great War 

formidable army ready for service on his western fron- 
tier. He had a partially competent officers' corps and 
a fairly good General Staff. His forces were moder- 
ately well supplied with artillery and with munitions, 
which were used lavishly while they lasted. Nothing, 
of course, could overcome the inherent weakness of a 
national army recruited from an inert and backward 
population like Russia's. But this handicap, as well 
as the scantiness of material out of which good com- 
missioned and non-commissioned officers could be 
created, did not make its effect felt disastrously until 
the spring of 191 5. 

In the war plans originally drawn by the French and 
Russian general staffs Russia was to put in the field at 
once about 1,600,000 men. Half of these were to be 
used in containing the 900,000 Austro-Hungarians 
expected to mobilize on the Eastern Front. The other 
half were to be used in attacking Germany — the 
"principal enemy." 

Russia exceeded her mobilization programme. She 
probably had 1,800,000 men in the field in August, 
1 9 14. But she used less than half of these against 
Germany. Two Russian armies entered East Prussia 
about the middle of August. The first, under Rennen- 
kampf, crossed the Niemen and moved west toward 
Konigsberg. It won the battle of Gumbinnen and 



Russia's Early Successes 163 

pressed on beyond Insterburg. The second army, 
under Samsonoff, advanced north-west out of Poland, 
threatening the Hne of the Vistula north of Thorn. 
This army was badly handled, and in the last week in 
August walked into a trap at Tannenberg, where it 
was partially enveloped and routed by Hindenburg, 
who had been put in command of the German forces 
in the East. The Russian losses were probably above 
125,000. 

This striking victory caught the German imagination 
and started Hindenburg's colossal vogue as the German 
War God. No very clear accounts were furnished of 
the battle of Tannenberg. The German public accepted 
a legendary version of it, just as it accepted the whole- 
sale fabrications of Russian outrages in East Prussia. 
The series of booklets on the campaigns and battles of 
the war, issued for popular consumption by the German 
General Staff, is as silent about Tannenberg as it is 
about the battle of the Marne. 

Dr. Miihlon recounts in his diary one of the blood- 
curdling stories circulated in Germany to add to Hin- 
denburg's glory. He writes under the date of October 
5. 1914: 

What did Hindenburg's troops do when they 
triumphed over the Russians ? The story goes from 
mouth to mouth. It was not enough that the enemy 



1 64 The Strategy of the Great War 

was driven into the swamps; tens of thousands of 
them who wished to surrender and sought to clam- 
ber out of the morass were pushed back at the bay- 
onet's point, until they were suffocated and drowned. 
This was done under orders. Quarter was not to 
be given. One could not make use at home of so 
many prisoners. For days and nights the cries of 
the drowning were heard above the thunder of the 
cannon; and many a soldier who was obliged to 
listen to this clamour of desperation lost his reason. 
Ninety thousand prisoners were taken in that battle; 
but it is said that still more were murdered as they 
lay helpless and pleading for aid. 

Miihlon doesn't vouch for the truth of this story. 
Hindenburg was credited a year or more later with 
admitting that it was a mere fiction. 

General Basil Gourko, who commanded Rennen- 
kampf's cavalry, says in his book War and Revolution 
in Russia, published in English in 19 19, that the two 
corps of Samsonoff's army which were lost were sur- 
rounded in Tannenberg forest. Samsonoff himself, try- 
ing to escape on foot in the night, became separated 
from his staff and died in the woods, Gourko thinks 
from heart failure. The story which Miihlon repeats is 
evidently a grotesque counterpart of the legend which 
represents the Prussian Guard as engulfed in the St. 
Gond marshes at the battle of the Marne. 

Tannenberg was a smashing reverse for the Russians. 



Russia's Early Successes 165 

It ended the Entente dream of a Russian offensive 
against Germany — of a Cossack march to BerHn across 
the Vistula and the Oder. It was made evident in the 
very first month of the war that Russia no longer 
ranked with Germany as a military power. She could 
not fight the Germans on equal terms. Her superiority 
in numbers was more than offset by her inferiority in 
leadership, organization, and military efficiency. 

Russia could never hope to crush Germany. But 
a sound instinct led her to believe that she could come 
near to crushing Austria-Hungary. Even before Tan- 
nenberg she had decided to depart from the strategic 
plan agreed on with the French General Staff. She 
resolved to make her chief effort against the Austro- 
Hungarian armies, instead of merely containing them. 
The "secondary enemy" was converted into the "prin- 
cipal enemy." Conditions on the Austrian front had 
changed since 1892 and the change was all in Russia's 
favour. Austria-Hungary was unable in August, 1914, 
to put 900,000 men on the Eastern battle line. She 
was too much tied up with the Serbian campaign to do 
so. Her forces in Galicia and Bukowina numbered 
hardly 700,000. Against them the Russians had 
concentrated probably 1,100,000. 

Moreover, the Austrian High Command played into 
Russia's hand. It had undertaken an offensive in 



1 66 The Strategy of the Great War 

Poland far too ambitious for its resources. General 
Dankl's army moved north from the San River into 
the Lublin gap, intending to take the Warsaw- 1 van- 
gorod line in the, rear. In order to keep in touch with 
Dankl's forces Auffenberg was obliged to extend dan- 
gerously the left wing of the army covering Lemberg. 

Russia had three armies to Austria-Hungary's two. 
One, under Ivanoff , moved west from Brest-Litovsk to 
defend Lublin. The other two, under Russky and 
Brusiloff, respectively, converged on Lemberg, from 
the north-east, east, and south-east. Auffenberg's 
line was first broken and turned at its southern end, 
about Halicz, on the Dniester River. That reverse 
forced a general withdrawal and the evacuation of 
Lemberg. 

Auffenberg next made a stand on the line from Gro- 
dek, north to Rawa-Russka, where his front adjoined 
Dankl's. Russky then broke and turned Auffenberg's 
position at its northern end and created a gap between 
his army and Dankl's. Ivanoff threw himself on Dankl. 
The Austrians were routed at every point, retreating 
south across the Carpathians and west toward Cracow. 
About 200,000 Austrian prisoners were taken. The 
total Austrian casualties were probably over 300,000. 

These brilliant victories obscured the disaster at 
Tannenberg. They restored Russia's prestige, and, 



Russia's Early Successes 167 

since they coincided with JofiEre's success at the Marne, 
they raised unwarranted hopes of a real Franco-Russian 
mihtary concert directed against the "principal enemy 
power." These hopes were extinguished in the West 
when the Germans rallied at the Aisne, conquered 
practically all of Belgium, and extended their hold on 
Northern France. They were extinguished in the 
East when the Russian campaign in Western Poland 
failed late in November in the very confused operations 
about Lodz. 

For a time, however, after the Lemberg victories, 
while the Austro-Hungarians were recuperating and 
the Germans were organizing new formations behind 
the Vistula fortresses, the Russian offensive showed con- 
siderable vitality. The armies in Galicia crossed the 
San, invested Przemysl, pushed west toward Cracow 
and south-west to the passes of the Carpathians. The 
Austrians could not stop them unaided. But Germany 
was able to suspend Russian progress in the south by 
sending Hindenburg east from Silesia in a dash for 
Warsaw, while a supporting Austrian army marched 
from the north of Cracow for Ivangorod. 

This was Hindenburg 's first Polish counter-offensive. 
It lasted only three weeks. The Germans got as far 
as the outskirts of Warsaw and dropped a few shells 
in the city. But the Russians brought up troops from 



i68 The Strategy of the Great War 

Galicia, crossed the Vistula, and attacked Hindenburg's 
flanks. He retreated with great rapidity. His man- 
oeuvre, however, had dislocated the Russian front in 
Galicia, the armies there retiring from the Carpathians 
and to the east of the San. The siege of Przemysl was 
momentarily raised by the Austrians. 

When the danger to Warsaw had passed the Russian 
advance in the south was resumed. It carried the 
invaders beyond the Dunajec and to within about 
eight miles of Cracow. At the same time the Russian 
armies west of the Vistula in Poland approached the 
Prussian frontier. 

This was Russian high tide on the Polish-Galician 
front. Some Russian cavalry even crossed into Posen. 
But Hindenburg had now received heavy reinforce- 
ments. He used them in a second campaign for War- 
saw, attacking the Russians from the direction of Thorn. 

Hindenburg turned the northern flank of the armies 
, opposing him in Western Poland. Then a part of his 
own army was enveloped by Russian forces coming 
south across the Vistula. Here Rennenkampf failed to 
take advantage of a great opportunity. After desper- 
ate fighting the tangled situation was straightened out 
by a Russian retirement from Lodz toward Warsaw. 
Later in December Hindenburg attacked the Russians 
on their new front and forced them back to the Bzura- 



Russia's Early Successes 169 

Rawka line, close to the Vistula. There they held on 
successfully until the following summer. 

The battles in Poland in October, November, and 
December proved that, although the Russians were 
incapable of a sustained offensive against the Germans, 
they could at least meet and repel German attacks. 
Hindenburg had used against them the old tactics of 
massed infantry assault — the same that had failed so 
disastrously on the West Front in the battles of the 
Yser and of Ypres. He had now nearly equal numbers 
and the benefit of an admirable network of strategic 
railroads in his rear. But he had not acquired that 
vast superiority in artillery which was needed to break 
through intrenched fronts. As in the Japanese War, 
the Russian armies were sluggish and uncertain on the 
offensive, but tenacious on the defensive. The trench 
warfare deadlock, which began on the East Front also 
in the fall of 1914, did mu'ch to neutralize temporarily 
the defects in Russia's military organization. 

After January, 1915, the German High Command 
turned to the East for the decision which it had missed 
in the West. Many new divisions were assigned to 
Hindenburg and vast stores of supplies were accumu- 
lated in Posen, Silesia, and West Prussia. The first 
sign of this change in German policy came in the con- 
tinuance of operations in the East all through the win- 



170 The Strategy of the Great War 

ter of 1 9 14-15, although in the West the fighting died 
down to almost nothing. It was probably Germany's 
primary aim to wear out Russia's fragile military 
machine — to deplete her artillery and munitions re- 
serves, leaving her undersupplied in the spring and 
thus nullifying Russian superiority in crude man power. 

Berlin had now assumed complete control of the 
Austro-Hungarian armies. In January German divi- 
sions were sent into Hungary to quiet Magyar unrest 
and to threaten Serbia and Rumania. A large part 
of Bukowina was recaptured and Austro-Hungarian 
forces were set in motion to relieve Przemysl. 

In the north Hindenburg continued into February 
his attacks on the lines defending Warsaw. Then he 
moved around into East Prussia to meet a second Rus- 
sian invasion. This ended, as the first one did, in a 
severe Russian defeat. In the Battle of the Mazurian 
Lakes, fought in the midst of midwinter storms, Hin- 
denburg repeated his Tannenberg strategy of envelop- 
ment and captured forty thousand prisoners. For 
the third time he demonstrated the hopelessness of 
any Russian offensive against Germany. But, though 
Hindenburg could smash the Russians in open fighting, 
he could not break through their defence of Warsaw. 
He made one more eft'ort in February and March, this 
time-irom the north — and once more failed. 



Russia's Early Successes 171 

Przemysl, the great Austrian stronghold near the 
San, surrendered on March 22, 191 5. The Russians 
starved it out. They lacked the big howitzers which 
Germany had used to reduce Liege, Namur, Maubeuge, 
and Antwerp. They lacked proper siege trains. So 
they sat down and waited patiently for the fortress to 
fall, meanwhile frustrating Austro-Hungarian attempts 
to relieve it. 

It was a sensational capitulation — the most sensa- 
tional of the sort during the war. But the Allied pub- 
lics greatly misjudged its meaning. The capture of 
Przemysl was not due to Russian skill and vigour, but 
to Austrian incompetency. Przemysl should never 
have been held. There might have been some excuse 
for throwing an army into it during the hurried retreat 
from Lemberg early in September, on the theory that 
the necessity of investing the fortress would check the 
Russian pursuit. 

When Joffre retreated from the Belgian border in 
August, 1 9 14, he left a garrison of forty thousand men 
in Maubeuge. They were able to hold out less than 
two weeks. They did impede the German pursuit 
a little and left Moltke several divisions short at the 
Marne. But history will probably say that the results 
did not justify Joffre in sacrificing forty thousand 
French troops at Maubeuge. 



172 The Strategy of the Great War 

History can have no hesitation whatever about 
Przemysl. Its garrison never played any considerable 
r61e in checking the Russian irruption into Central 
Galicia. The troops interned within its fortified zone 
served no important strategical or tactical purpose. 
And after the Austrians were lucky enough to interrupt 
the first investment in October, 19 14, it should have 
been furthest from their thoughts to run the risks 
of a second investment. Fortresses everywhere had 
proved to be nothing but man traps. But General 
Conrad Hotzendorff, the Austrian chief of staff, was 
too thorough an Austrian to profit by experience. He 
didn't dismantle and abandon Przemysl when he had 
the chance to do so. Instead, he left Kusmanek's 
army cooped up in the scantily provisioned stronghold 
when he retreated a second time across the Carpathians. 

The long-drawn-out siege of Przemysl was, in fact, 
a striking symptom of Russia's failing strength. Liege, 
Namur, Maubeuge, and Antwerp all fell within two 
weeks after investment. Przemysl held out for ned:rly 
five months. The Russians lacked the means to reduce 
it. But this salient fact was overlooked in the Allied 
rejoicings which followed its surrender. The outside 
world, ignorant of the preparations which Germany 
was making for a spectacular Eastern campaign, looked 
now for a new series of Russian successes which would 



Russia's Early Successes i73 

carry the Czar's armies across the Carpathians into the 
Hungarian plains. 

The Grand Duke Nicholas himself seemed to think 
that he could plough his way through the mountain 
passes and threaten Budapest and Vienna. He had 
already begun the Battle of the Carpathians. After 
the surrender of Przemysl he redoubled his efforts. 
He concentrated his attack on the two westernmost 
passes, Lupkow and Dukla. The last named was the 
lowest and most open of all the Carpathian passages. 
Here the Russians actually got through the mountains 
and occupied positions on the south side of the range. 

But by the end of March Austrian demoralization 
was over. The Germans had reorganized and stiffened 
the Austro-Hungarian armies. The completion of 
mobilization had filled up the ranks. While holding 
fast at Dukla and Lupkow, the forces of the Central 
Powers took the offensive along the rest of the Carpa- 
thian line and gradually got a footing on the north- 
ern slopes. The Russian offensive slowed down and 
stopped. A couple of weeks of inaction intervened. 
Then Hindenburg and Mackensen launched the tre- 
mendous assault on the Dunajec, east of Cracow, which 
started the Russian retreat to the Dvina River and the 
Pinsk marshes. 

At the end of April Russia still had more men on the 



174 The Strategy of the Great War 

Polish-Galician front than the Teutonic allies had. 
She had a resourceful commander in chief in the Grand 
Duke Nicholas. She had competent army commanders 
in Alexieff, Ivanoff , Brusiloff, and Russky. But in the 
continuous fighting since August she had suffered al- 
most irreparable losses in regimental officers and first 
line troops. The new divisions, recruited rapidly from 
the heterogeneous races and peoples of the empire, 
were of uneven quality and unequal to the intensified 
demands of modem warfare. 

Kuropatkin, after the Japanese War, expressed grave 
doubts of the ability of a Russian national army to hold 
its own against the armies of Germany and Austria- 
Hungary. In a report to the Czar on the Manchurian 
campaign he wrote : 

Undoubtedly universal military service has, from 
a moral standpoint, improved the mass of our troops, 
but in view of the low standard of civilization of 
the individual men it is difficult to infuse them with 
the notion of discipline. Belief in God, devotion 
to the Czar, love for the Fatherland, still contribute 
to keep the soldiers firm in the ranks and to make 
them brave and obedient fighters, but these feelings 
have in recent times been severely shaken and forcibly 
wrested from the heart of the Russians. 

The Russian armies at the beginning of the war 
did much to discredit Kuropatkin 's forebodings. 



Russia's Early Successes 175 

But as time passed inherent defects became more 
obvious. 

Lieutenant- General Baron Freytag-Loringhoven says 
in his book, A Nation Trained in Arms or a Militia?: 

In the ten years' interval between the Peace of 
Portsmouth and the outbreak of the world war much 
had been done to promote the war preparedness of 
the Russian army. But, though individual improve- 
ments were effected, it was impossible to infuse a 
new spirit into a national army of gigantic size within 
the space of ten years, more especially in view of the 
low standard of culture and the apathetic tempera- 
ment of the Russian people. Owing to its insensibil- 
ity to losses and defeats, as well as to the moral effects 
of retreat, the Russian army maintained its cohesion 
even in the most difficult situations. Nevertheless, 
the unwieldy character of the Russian masses showed 
itself just as it had done in previous wars. In spite 
of the popular notion of the inexhaustible supply of 
the Russian reserves, the number of thoroughly 
trained men who could be sent to the front grew 
less and less as time went on, so that the efficiency 
of the army steadily declined. 

Again in his Deductions from the World War the same 
author says : 

The Russian army had learned much from the 
Manchurian campaign, both as regards organization 
and also as regards strategy and tactics. It had 



176 The Strategy of the Great War 

been systematically organized and prepared for the 
war against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Never- 
theless, the defects in the political organism of the 
empire and in the national character could not be 
remedied in a decade. . . . The world war, no less 
than the March revolution of the present year [19 17] 
though in a different sense, has revealed that Russia 
was not really ripe for universal military service. 
Had it been otherwise we and our Allies might have 
been unable to defend ourselves against envelopment 
of overwhelmingly superior numbers. 

Worst of all, the deteriorating Russian army of April, 
1915, lacked artillery and munitions. Russia had spent 
lavishly what she had in nine months of continuous 
fighting. At the beginning of the year, an urgent ap- 
peal had been made to France and Great Britain for 
assistance. The greatest need of the Allies was a 
connected Eastern and Western Front — a short-cut 
through the Dardanelles by which munitions, big 
guns, and a stiffening of Western troops could flow 
uninterruptedly into Russia. 

France was too much tied up on her own soil to do 
anything. Great Britain, however, heeded Russia's 
appeal to the extent of undertaking to force the Dar- 
danelles. Had the straits been opened in March, 191 5, 
Russia could probably have been sustained in Galicia 
and Poland and the great retreat of the following 
summer prevented. 



Russia's Early Successes i77 

But the naval attack on the Dardanelles and the 
Gallipoli military expedition both failed. Russia was 
left in an exposed, over-extended position, while her 
power was steadily weakening. She had gallantly 
borne more than her share of the Allied burden. She 
had had great and surprising successes in the field. 
But she had shot her bolt. There was a touch of 
illusion in her victories. Cut off from the West, she 
could not maintain an unequal struggle with Germany. 
After Gallipoli the chance to develop her vast man 
power and use it efficiently was definitively lost to 
the Allies. 



CHAPTER X 

THE TRAGEDY OF GALLIPOLT 

For the Allies the Dardanelles campaign was the 
most poignant tragedy of the war. It was the defeat 
which counted most heavily against them. Failure 
to force the straits in the winter and spring of 191 5 
blasted the one real hope the Entente had of establishing 
a continuous front. 

The capture of Constantinople would have given 
the Western Powers easy access to Odessa and Kiev, 
the bases of the Russian armies operating in Bukowina 
and Galicia. It would have prevented Bulgaria's 
entry into the war as an ally of Germany and Austria- 
Hungary. Turkey, being completely isolated, would 
have been compelled to sue for peace. Serbia would 
have been saved. Rumania could have joined the 
Entente without risk to herself. The war could have 
been carried to the Danube and the border of Transyl- 
vania and an iron circle could have been drawn about 
Germany and Austria-Hungary from the North Sea 

to Switzerland, through the Italian Alps, across the 

178 



The Tragedy of Gallipoli 179 

Adriatic, and up through Hungary, Galicia, and Poland 
to the Baltic. 

Excluding Foch's final campaign, the Dardanelles 
expedition was therefore the most vital offensive opera- 
tion undertaken by the AUies. If it had succeeded, 
it would have changed the whole course of the war. 
By winning Constantinople early in 19 15, the Entente 
combination would probably have been able to defeat 
the two-power Teuton combination without help from 
the United States. 

Because the sea and land operations at Gallipoli 
were dismal fiascos many AlHed writers have vastly 
underrated their importance. The whole enterprise 
has been cavalierly brushed aside as an egregious 
strategical blunder. Such a view is unwarranted. 
The strategy of the Dardanelles campaign was 
eminently sound. The British War Council was on ' 
the right track. It was experimenting with a big and 
bold idea. The fault was not in the plan, but in the 
execution. 

If there had been a Farragut in command of the 
Allied fleet in the Dardanelles, the passage to Constan- 
tinople would have been forced. But no Farragut 
was in sight. Overcaution replaced that calm, col- 
lected daring which inspired the running of the forts 
of the Lower Mississippi and of Mobile Bay. 



i8o The Strategy of the Great War 

The Turkish defences in the Dardanelles were no 
more impassable than were Forts St. Philip and Jack- 
son or Forts Morgan and Gaines. Yet the British 
Admiralty and the British commander-in-chief on the 
spot didn't balance with sufficient imagination the 
penalties of failure against the far-reaching military 
consequences of success. It was one of those moments 
in history which wait for the instinct of genius to 
manifest itself and which so often wait in vain! 

Conditions in the winter of 1914-15 were, in fact, 
highly favourable to an Allied attempt to reach Con- 
stantinople. Turkey had been forced into the war 
prematurely by Baron Wangenheim, the German 
Ambassador, who wanted to make sure that the Dar- 
danelles would be barred to ingoing French and 
British and outgoing Russian shipping. Hostilities 
began late in October, following a surprise naval raid, 
under German management, on the Russian Black 
Sea ports. A week before the raid was made Wangen- 
heim had induced the Turkish Government to close 
navigation through the straits. 

Turkey and Bulgaria were expected to take joint 
action. But Ferdinand was not ready to show his 
hand until the autumn of 191 5. So Turkey remained 
cut off for months from direct and easy commimication 
with Austria-Hungary. The main railroad line south 



The Tragedy of Gallipoli i8i 

ran through Serbia from Belgrade to Nish; and all 
Serbia was then in the hands of the Serbians. Ru- 
mania had declared a strict neutrality and put a ban 
on the passage of war material across her territory, 
German soldiers came freely to Constantinople in mufti. 
But the shipment of munitions was limited and difficult. 
And without a fair supply of shells for the Dardanelles 
forts the straits could not be held against a vigorous 
naval attack. 

On January 2,1915, the Russian Government strongly 
urged Great Britain and France to make a campaign 
against Constantinople. Whether or not the Turks 
heard of this message through German spies, Constan- 
tinople was greatly perturbed all through January. 
Ambassador Morgenthau's Story gives a vivid picture 
of conditions in the Turkish capital in that panicky 
period. According to his testimony the belief was 
general that the Allied fleet would attack and would 
get through. Wangenheim shared both these appre- 
hensions. So, to some extent, did Goltz, the Ger- 
man supervisor of the Turkish military establishment. 
On this point the American envoy writes : 

I find in my* diary Goltz's precise opinion, as 
reported to me by Wangenheim, and I quote it ex- 
actly as it was written at that time: "Although he 
thought it was almost impossible to force the Dar- 



1 82 The Strategy of the Great War 

dandles, still, if England thought it an important 
move, of the general war, they could, by sacrificing 
ten ships, force the entrance, and do it very fast, 
and be up in the Marmora within ten hours from 
the time they forced it." 



The Turkish Government made feverish preparations 
to move to Eski-Shehr in Asia Minor. Wangenheim 
and Pallavicini, the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador, 
both urged the Turkish Cabinet to go to Adrian ople 
instead. But Talaat Pasha considered Eski-Shehr 
safer. There was only one Turkish or Teuton official 
who maintained that Constantinople wasn't in any 
danger. That was the swashbuckling Enver Pasha. 
But he was under a cloud, having just returned from 
his disastrous Caucasus campaign against the Russians. 
He found no listeners. The panic in Constantinople 
continued, in fact, all through February. After the 
Allied fleets had destroyed the forts at the entrance of 
the straits on February 19th, there was a lively exodus 
from the city. 

The British War Council had considered on Novem- 
ber 25, 1914, the question of forcing the Dardanelles. 
Many Allied war vessels were already in the Eastern 
Mediterranean. They still enjoyed complete freedom 
of movement there, since German and Austrian sub- 
marines had not yet made their way out of the Adriatic. 



The Tragedy of Gallipoli 183 

The Queen Elizabeth, with her 15-inch guns, was dis- 
patched to the -^gean to enhance the superiority of 
the fleet's armament over the semi-obsolete armament 
of the forts. 

It was intended originally to make a joint land and 
sea attack. The troops were to come from Egypt 
where the British were awaiting a Turkish attempt 
to rush the Suez Canal. Egypt was heavily garri- 
soned and it was a simple matter to transport an army 
from Alexandria to bases in the ^gean Islands. It 
was also just as feasible to defend Egypt by fighting 
the Turk at Gallipoli as by fighting him in the Sinai 
Desert. 

Earl Kitchener, the British Secretary of State for 
War, who exercised an autocratic control over military 
affairs, announced in January, after the Russian appeal 
arrived, that there were no troops immediately avail- 
able for the Dardanelles operation. So, on January 
13th, the British War Council decided to risk a purely 
naval attack. By the first week in February the 
Allies had concentrated off the island of Imbros one 
super-dreadnought, the Queen Elizabeth; one battle- 
cruiser, the Inflexible; sixteen pre-dreadnoughts and 
nine cruisers (all of the above British); seven pre- 
dreadnoughts and three cruisers (French), and one 
Russian cruiser. There was an adequate comple- 



i84 The Strategy of the Great War 

ment of destroyers, mine-sweepers, and submarines. 

The Dardanelles passage is about sixty miles long. 
At the ^gean end it is about two miles wide. Here 
the Turks had some antiquated fortifications on the 
opposite sides of the entrance. They were incapable 
of defence and were quickly knocked to pieces by the 
Allied fleet, standing eight or nine miles out to sea. 
Inside the entrance the straits broaden out to perhaps 
four miles. Then they gradually contract. About 
fourteen miles up are the Dardanelles narrows. Here 
the passage is only a mile wide, and hills rise abruptly 
from the shores. This stretch, ideal for defensive 
purposes, was studded with forts. It constituted the 
main barrier to the sea of Marmora. A mine field 
stretched down through the narrows into the lower 
part of the straits. 

The most important Turkish fortification was the 
Anadolu Hamidieh battery, on the Anatolian side. 
It was situated on an elevation near Nagara Point, 
facing south, and commanded the whole lower stretch 
of the straits. Its guns were of the Krupp model of 
1885, and had an extreme range of about nine miles. 
About three miles farther south, on the Anatolian 
side, was the Dardanos battery, of Krupp guns of the 
model of 1905, reinforced by some naval guns taken 
from the Goehen and from the Turkish war vessels. 



The Tragedy of Gallipoli 185 

laid up off Constantinople. The batteries on the 
European shore were of minor importance. 

The fortifications at the entrance to the straits were 
destroyed on February 19th. Thereafter the Allied 
ships moved into the straits, sweeping the mines and 
bombarding the Turkish forts from Dardanos north. 
The Allied guns outranged the Turkish by one or two 
miles and the ships were able to keep beyond the 
danger line. But they made little impression on the 
Turkish batteries by this long-distance bombardment. 

The first and only real effort to close in came on 
March i8th. The attack was a surprise to the world 
at large, which had come to the conclusion that the 
Allied fleet was being used merely to clear the way for 
a land expedition. The tradition had been established 
tha"^ no fleet could safely destroy or run modem land 
batteries. 

The results of the assault of March i8th seemed to 
confirm this theory. The Allies lost three pre-dread- 
noughts — the French Bouvet and the British Irresistible 
and Ocean. All these were sunk by mines, although 
the Bouvet was also hit by shells from Hamidieh. The 
British battle-cruiser Inflexible and the French pre- 
dreadnought Gaulois were also damaged by gun fire. 

The losses, which were at once admitted, caused 
great concern. But they were less serious than they 



1 86 The Strategy of the Great War 

seemed to be. Goltz had fixed the price of a 
successful attack at ten ships. Moreover, the all-day 
action of March i8th had greatly improved the fleet's 
chances. For the real justification of the Allied attack 
was the well-founded presumption that the Turks were 
short of munitions. The Allies could replace the ships 
which were sunk; but the Turks could not replace 
the shells which had been shot away. 

I wrote in an article which appeared in the New 
York Tribune of March 21, 191 5: 

The Allied fleet has today a clearer idea of the 
difficulties ahead of it. Yet the losses it has suffered 
do not prove that it is unequal to the task of reducing 
the forts and forcing a passage of the straits. The 
three battleships lost were sunk by mines floating 
out on a swift current. The guns of the forts have 
apparently not yet seriously damaged a single big 
warship. 

The fleet has the advantage in range and weight 
of projectiles. If it takes its time, it can destroy 
the forts bit by bit. But that the Turks have a 
sufficient supply of ammunition for their land bat- 
teries is a pretty extravagant assumption. Every 
day of hard fighting will bring the stock in hand 
nearer to the point of exhaustion, and if the forts 
fail the mine fields can be easily reached and cleared. 

That was unorthodox in judgment and doctrine. 
From the standpoint of current naval opinion the Allied 



The Tragedy of Gallipoli 187 

withdrawal seemed at the time to prove it unsound. 
But testimony which has come to light later shows that 
it was perfectly sound. Ambassador Morgenthau, in 
his volume of reminiscences, candidly exposes the hope- 
less situation of the Turkish defence on March 19th. 
He had visited and inspected the Dardanelles forts on 
March 15th and i6th. He talked freely with the 
Turkish commanders and officials, having made the 
trip as the guest of Enver Pasha. He also had other 
sources of information. He writes : 

Let us suppose that the Allies had returned, say 
on the morning of the 19th, what would have hap- 
pened? The one overwhelming fact is that the for- 
tifications were very short of ammunition. They 
had almost reached the limit of their resisting power 
when the British fleet passed out on the afternoon 
of the 1 8 th. I had secured permission for Mr. George 
A. Schreiner, the well-known American correspond- 
ent of the Associated Press, to visit the Dardanelles 
on this occasion. On the night of the i8th this 
correspondent discussed the situation with General 
Mertens, who was chief technical officer at the straits. 
General Mertens admitted that the outlook was very 
discouraging for the defence. 

"We expect that the British will come back early 
tomorrow morning," he said, "and if they do, we 
may be able to hold out for a few hours." 

General Mertens did not declare in so many words 
that the ammunition was practically exhausted, but 
Mr. Schreiner discovered that such was the case. 



1 88 The Strategy of the Great War 

The fact was that Fort Hamidieh, the most powerful 
defence on the Asiatic side, had just seventeen 
armour-piercing shells left, while at Kilid-ul-Bahr, 
which was the main defence on the European side, 
there were precisely ten. 

"I should advise you to get up at six o'clock to- 
morrow morning," said General Mertens, "and take 
to the Anatolian HUls. That's what we are going 
to do." 

Mr. Schreiner in his book, Berlin to Bagdad, tells the 
same story in slightly different words. He reports 
Mertens as saying: 

It'll go bad with us if the Allies return tomorrow. 
They have lost heavily today, to be sure. But I 
think I know the British well enough to feel that 
they will be back bright and early. If you have 
an5rthing around here you wish to save, take my 
advice and pack it tonight. Be ready to get out 
of here early in the morning. 

What deterred the Allied fleet from going back? 
Vice-Admiral Garden was sick when the attack was 
made. Vice-Admiral de Robeck, who commanded in 
his place, wrote in a report, made on March 19th: 

The power of the fleet to dominate the fortresses 
by superiority of fire seems to be established. Vari- 
ous other dangers and difficulties will have to be 
encountered, but nothing has happened which justi- 
fies the belief that the loss of the undertaking will ex- 
ceed what has always been expected and provided for. 



The Tragedy of Gallipoli 189 

Had this judgment been acted on, Constantinople 
would have fallen; for there was nothing to stop the 
Allied warships after Fort Hamidieh and Nagara Point 
had been passed. 

Probably the deterrent influence was that extreme 
disinclination to risk naval losses which prevailed 
among the technical advisers of the First Lord of the 
British Admiralty. Lord Fisher, who originally op- 
posed the Dardanelles venture, stated the theory of 
the naval experts in a memorandum which he prepared 
for Premier Asquith in January, 1915. He said: 

The sole justification of bombardments and attacks 
of the fleet on fortified places, such as the Dar- 
danelles, is to force a decision at sea. As long as the 
German High Sea fleet possesses its present strength 
and splendid gunnery efficiency, so long it is impera- 
tive that no operation be undertaken by the British 
fleet calculated to impair its superiority, which is 
none too great, in view of the heavy losses already 
experienced in ships and men, which latter cannot 
be filled in the period of the war, in which the navy 
differs materially from the army. Even the older 
ships should not be risked, for they cannot be lost 
without losing men and they form the only reserve 
behind the Great Fleet. 

This was a counsel of overcaution. The Allied fleets 
were always greatly superior to the Teuton fleets. The 
loss of a dozen pre-dreadnoughts in the Dardanelles 



190 The Strategy of the Great War 

was of infinitesimal consequence compared with the 
military advantages which would have resulted from 
the opening of the straits. Renunciation of the attack 
cose the Allies billions of treasure and hundreds of 
thousands of lives. The few obsolescent vessels spared 
made Great Britain's naval superiority no more secure, 
and contributed practically nothing toward assuring 
the Entente's success through the exercise of its superior 
naval power. 

A faint heart somewhere let slip through British 
fingers a victory which would have been as far-reaching 
in its results as Trafalgar. It also put on Great Britain 
the burden of resorting to a land attack to force the 
straits. Acceptance of defeat by the navy greatly 
weakened British prestige in the East. In order to 
restore it the army had to be called in. 

A land operation against Constantinople presentea 
many more difficulties than a naval operation did. 
British naval organization Vv'as efficient. In the winter 
of 1 9 14-15 British military organization was far from 
efficient. Much time would necessarily be lost getting 
a sufficient army to Gallipoli. And the Turks could 
assemble more troops there in a given time than the 
British could. 

To have a fair chance of success the land attack 
should have come as a surprise and should have been 



The Tragedy of Gallipoll 191 

coincidental with the naval attack. On FehvusLTy i6th, 
a month after the decision to use the fleet without 
waiting for the army had been reached, the British 
War Council determined to make a land campaign 
against Constantinople. But four days later Earl 
Kitchener postponed the departure of the 29th Divi- 
sion from England, without even letting the War Coun- 
cil know about it. This caused a delay of three weeks 
in the arrival of the full expeditionary force. It in- 
evitably reduced the chances of a surprise descent on 
the Turkish positions. 

The Allies in the beginning sent about 120,000 men 
to the Dardanelles. One Australian and one New 
Zealand division were transferred from Egypt. With 
them came East Indians and British Territorials. A 
British naval division and the 29th Division arrived 
from England. The French could spare but few troops. 
They provided some marines, colonials, and foreign 
legion detachments. The French forces under General 
d'Amade made a lodgment on the Asiatic side of the 
entrance to the straits. They were subsequently 
transferred to the European side. 

The Allied army was put ashore on April 25th, more 
than five weeks after the naval attack had been sus- 
pended. The plan of General Ian Hamilton, the Brit- 
ish commander, was to get a foothold at the tip of the 



192 The Strategy of the Great War 

peninsula and on the ^gean shore a little farther up. 
Then the two British forces would work north and 
east, converging on the Kilid Bahr Plateau, which 
dominated the forts in the Narrows. 

The great obstacle to the success of this plan was 
the configuration of the Gallipoli peninsula. There 
were few landing places where shelter was available, 
either for the lighters offshore or the troops on the 
beaches. Excessive losses occurred in the course of 
the landing operations. And after the troops had 
established themselves in unsatisfactory positions 
ashore, they found their road north and east barred 
by Turkish infantry, holding higher ground, admirably 
adapted to defence. 

The British advanced a few miles from the extreme 
tip of the peninsula but were held before Achi Baba 
Heights. The Anzacs (Australians and New Zealand- 
ers) made a little progress east toward Sari Bahr. 
Then a trench war deadlock ensued. Toward the end 
of May German submarines appeared in the ^gean and 
the Allied fleet had to take to cover, thus depriving the 
army of the artillery support which would have been 
needed to launch a powerful break-through operation 
like that at Neuve Chapelle. 

At this point the British War Council would have 
been justified in cutting losses and drawing out of 



The Tragedy of Gallipoll 193 

Gallipoli. But the doggedness it had failed to show in 
using the navy in the straits, it now showed in using 
the army on the peninsula. Six more divisions were 
dispatched to support the six originally sent. It was 
decided to make another attack from a point still 
farther north — at Suvla Bay — thus taking the Turkish 
position opposite the Anzacs in the flank and rear. 

This was a sensible idea. It was also a fortunate 
one; for the Turks were caught napping. With bet- 
ter staff organization and more competent leadership 
General Ian Hamilton might easily have enveloped 
and crushed the Turks at Sari Bahr as Allenby 
enveloped and crushed them north of Jerusalem in 
September, 1918. 

But the British army had not yet learned how to 
make war. The great opportunity at Suvla was frit- 
tered away by generals who didn't realize the value 
of time. The troops fought heroically and captured 
positions which, if held by proper reinforcements, 
would have put the British in sight of the Dardanelles 
narrows. 

The Suvla Bay operation began on August 6th and 
lasted until August nth or 12th. When it was over 
General Hamilton appealed to the British Govern- 
ment for more troops. But the War Council was now 
through. The army was allowed to stay on until 



194 The Strategy of the Great War 

December — a part of it into January, 191 6. But all 
thought of an offensive against Constantinople was 
abandoned. 

The Dardanelles-Gallipoli expedition was thus one 
long train of mishaps. A bold and sound strategical 
conception was wrecked by persistent faults xn execu- 
tion. The British losses were ghastly in comparison 
with the results achieved. The killed, wounded, and 
missing numbered about 115,000. Nearly 100,000 
more men were incapacitated at one time or another 
by sickness. Because of its deplorable and costly 
failure many Allied writers described it as a piece of 
military madness and denounced its promoters, chief 
among whom was Winston Churchill, as bungling 
amateur strategists. 

Gallipoli was long used by the "Westerners" as a 
crushing example of the folly of diverting any of Great 
Britain's military strength to Eastern fronts. The 
attitude of the "Westerners" was that the Entente 
was entitled to do nothing in any other part of the 
world which might weaken Allied defensives or offen- 
sives in France and Belgium. This view was expressed 
unconditionally by Major-General Sir Frederick Mau- 
rice, in an article on "The Eastern and Western Con- 
troversy" in The Contemporary Review, for December, 
191 8. General Maurice, who was formerly Director 



The Tragedy of Gallipoli 195 

of Military Operations in the British War Office, 
said: 

There was every justification for the Dardanelles 
expedition, provided sufficient force to carry it through 
successfully could be made available without prejudice 
to the security of the Western Front. There was no 
such military force available in the spring of 191 5. 

It would be wrong to say that the Dardanelles 
expedition achieved no results, for it undoubtedly 
contributed materially to the exhaustion of Turkey 
and detained around Constantinople large Turkish 
forces which might otherwise have been attacking 
us in Egypt or Mesopotamia, or assisting the Ger- 
mans in Russia. But the results obtained were in 
no way commensurate with the expenditure of force 
and there can be little doubt that if the expedition 
had never been undertaken, victory on the Western 
Front would have been obtained much sooner. 

The fixed idea of the British "Westerners" shines 
out in those judgments. Yet the mistake of the British 
Government in 191 5 was not in sending too many men 
to Gallipoli, but in sending too few. The security of 
the Western Front was not imperilled by the dispatch 
of British troops to the ^Egean. It would not have 
been imperilled even if British reserves in France had 
been sent east. For Germany went on the defensive 
in the West in January, 191 5, and remained on the 
defensive there until February 21, 1916. The second 
German attack on Ypres, in April, 191 5, was only a 



196 The Strategy of the Great War 

local operation intended to distract attention from the 
Teuton concentration in Galicia. Neuve Chapelle 
and Loos — the two British West Front offensives of 
1 91 5 — were just as futile operations as the operation 
at Gallipoli. 

There was a chance in the East in 191 5 to alter the 
whole character of the war. There was no such chance 
in the West. Germany boldly seized her opportunity 
and nearly destroyed the Russian armies. The Allies 
embraced theirs half-heartedly and failed to take Con- 
stantinople. Allied operations on the West Front in 
191 5 led to nothing. They were only "nibbles." But 
control of the Balkans and the Near East and Russian 
ability to remain in the war were in the balance in the 
fighting at the Dardanelles and in the Gallipoli gulches. 

So far as the Entente of 191 5 was concerned it never 
had the power to compel a decision on the Western 
Front. Every single soldier who fought at Gallipoli 
could have been added to Sir John French's armies 
in Flanders without hastening an Entente victory in 
the West. The Entente, without the United States, 
might have won the war by linking up the Western 
and Russian fronts. It probably could not have won 
it in the West, after Russia's collapse, except through 
American assistance. 

When Russia was forced out of the struggle the full 



The Tragedy of Gallipoli i97 

strategic significance of the Dardanelles expedition 
became apparent to the English public. An account- 
ing was demanded. A commission, headed by Lord 
Cromer, made an investigation and submitted a report 
on March 8, 191 7. It became apparent from the 
evidence gathered that in 191 4 and the early part of 
1915 Earl Kitchener was the sole arbiter of British 
military policy. He dominated the War Council — 
and usually ignored it. Mr. Churchill described him 
as ' ' all-powerful , imperturbable , and reserved . ' ' Every- 
body bowed down to him. "Scarcely any one even 
ventured to argue with him in the Council," Mr. 
Churchill testified. 

Kitchener had too many irons in the fire; and his 
military capacity proved to be limited. He was of 
the stuff of which most popular idols are made. The 
British public knew only the Kitchener of Khartoum, 
the Kitchener of myth; and the politicians and soldiers 
who came in contact with him also weakly accepted 
him for a while at the public's valuation. 

As the commission could not help discovering, he 
undertook more than he could possibly accompHsh 
and his administration of the War Office was marked 
by confusion and inefficiency. He, therefore, was 
more responsible than any one else for the lack of co- 
operation at the Dardanelles between the army and the 



198 The Strategy of the Great War 

navy and for the bungling of the one great strategic 
opportunity which presented itself to the Entente 
Powers. 

Kitchener was not the man to direct a resolute and 
carefully organized operation such as was necessary to 
eject the Turks from the Gallipoli peninsula. Under 
him, as was testified by Major-General Charles E. 
Callwell, Director of Military Operations in 19 15, the 
General Staff had "virtually ceased to exist." Great 
Britain could send to Gallipoli some of the best troops 
in the world. But she was woefully lacking at that 
time in the staff machinery needed to get results out 
of them. 

There are two phases of the Gallipoli tragedy which 
will always stand out blackest. One is the sacrifice 
to inexperience and incompetency in leadership of 
splendid troops like the Anzacs. The other is the 
heart-breaking decision not to send the Allied fleet back 
into the Narrows on March 19th, when the Hamidieh 
and Kilid-ul-Bahr batteries had between them only 
tv/enty-seven armour-piercing shells left. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE CREATION OF MITTEL-EUROPA 

In both the political and the military sense Germany's 
vital need was always to secure her Continental posi- 
tion. Before William H's time this need had been 
kept steadfastly in view. Prussia fought the wars of 
1864, 1866, and 1870 in order to consolidate the German 
states under her leadership. Bismarck constructed the 
Triple Alliance in order to extend German power over 
Central Europe. Mittel-Europa was not an inven- 
tion of the latter-day Pan-Germans. It was a natural 
outgrowth of German opportunities and ambitions. 

In 1914 Germany thought the time had come for 
further territorial expansion. The line of least resis- 
tance was to the south and east. All the materials of 
Empire lay there. As the dominant partner in 
the Triple Alliance, Germany had reduced Austria- 
Hungary from the status of an equal to that of a de- 
pendent. Neither the Austrians nor the Hungarians 
loved the Germans. But they both needed German 

backing in order to maintain their grip on the subject 

199 



200 The Strategy of the Great War 

races of the Dual Monarchy. Eastern and South-east- 
ern Europe was the home of many small, long-sub- 
merged peoples. It could make little difference to them 
whether they remained under Austrian, Hungarian or 
Russian rule, or were absorbed into an enlarged Ger- 
man Empire. On the other hand, the populations of 
the more advanced Western European states, whose 
territory Germany coveted, would be extremely diffi- 
cult to assimilate, as German experience with Alsace- 
Lorraine had glaringly demonstrated. 

Germany's immediate future lay in the east of Europe, 
not in the west or overseas. When she turned her 
armies east in January, 191 5, and began the construc- 
tion of a vast central, Teutonized state, stretching well 
into Russia and south-east across the Bosporus toward 
the Gulf of Persia, she obeyed a sound political and 
military instinct. There is little to show, however, 
that her leaders were clearly conscious of the larger 
purposes of the Eastern campaign. With the General 
Staff, now reorganized under Falkenhayn, it seemed to 
be rather a question of going to the rescue of Austria- 
Hungary, recovering Galicia, seizing Poland, and secur- 
ing East Prussia from Russian invasion, before turning 
back for a military decision in the West. Falkenhayn 
was a convinced Westerner and remained one until 
he followed Moltke into disgrace. 



The Creation of Mittel-Europa 201 

He could see, however, the absolute necessity of 
driving the Russian armies out of Western Galicia 
and clearing the Carpathian front. Austria and 
Hungary both demanded that modicum of relief. 
Italy had also begun to press Vienna for territorial 
concessions. Berlin was called in as a broker and the 
German Government had every reason to believe that 
Italy's demands were only a prelude to war. And 
Austria could not defend her south-eastern border if 
the danger of a Russian break-through in the north- 
east were not removed. Italy did enter the war before 
long — on May 23, 191 5. But by the time the Italians 
could organize their offensive against Trent and Trieste 
Lemberg had fallen and the Russian armies in Galicia 
and Poland were already in headlong retreat. 

After the fall of Przemysl on March 22, 191 5, General 
Brusiloff had pushed through the Dukla Pass and nearly 
through the Lupkow Pass in the Western Carpathians. 
East of Cracow the Russian lines had been drawn back 
to and beyond the Dunajec River. The Russian posi- 
tions here ran north through the Carpathian foothills, 
following the valley of the Biala River to its junction 
with the Dunajec, near Tarnow, and thence up the 
Dunajec to the Vistula. 

The Germans had failed all through the winter and 
early spring to break through the Russian defence in 



202 The Strategy of the Great War 

Poland. Now they decided to crush the front held 
by General Radko Dimitrieff's army, facing Cracow. 
Success here would put them in the rear of the Russians 
at the Dukla and Lupkow passes and thus compel a 
Russian retirement toward Przemysl. 

General Mackensen was entrusted with the Dunajec 
operation. Four months were spent in preparing the 
blow. They were well spent. For Mackensen was 
to cut away from the old offensive methods which had 
proved so costly and ineffective in Poland, as well as 
in Flanders. He was to invent a new tactics of assault, 
based on the enormous development of the offensive 
power of artillery. He was to end the stagnation of 
trench warfare, so far, at least, as the Eastern Front 
was concerned. It was his business to forge an instru- 
ment by which Russia's vast superiority in crude man 
power could be easily offset. He therefore set about 
introducing a mechanicalized form of warfare in which 
Russia could not hope to compete with Germany, since 
she lacked then, and would lack for a long time there- 
after, the big guns and the munitions stocks with which 
Germany was to win her impressive and inexpensive 
victories. 

The battle of the Dunajec stands out in the history 
of the war not only because it started the long Russian 
retreat to the Dvina River and the Pripet Marshes, 



The Creation of Mittel-Europa 203 

but also because it struck a new balance in values 
between the offensive and the defensive. Rigid trench 
warfare had paralyzed the offence. It had made simply 
murderous the old-fashioned mass attack, following 
old-fashioned artillery preparation. The British offen- 
sive at Neuve Chapelle in March, 191 5, indicated what 
massed and intensified artillery fire — "drum fire" — 
could do to an enemy holding an ordinary trench line. 
But the infantry follow-up at Neuve Chapelle had been 
a complete failure. 

Mackensen proved in Galicia, too, that a sufficient 
artillery concentration could completely destroy sur- 
face trenches. He also proved that picked infantry 
could drive through all the trench lines of an enemy 
shaken by a tremendous bombardment. The Macken- 
sen "phalanx," the forerunner of the Falkenhayn and 
Hutier "shock troop" formations, became as famous 
as Mackensen's mobile heavy batteries, doing field 
artillery service. 

The British at Neuve Chapelle attacked a one-mile 
front, using three hundred big guns. Mackensen 
massed about two thousand guns on a front of several 
miles. The German official reports fix the length of 
the line broken through on May 2d at eleven miles. 
But the fire was largely concentrated on the enemy's 
centre before Gorlice. The bombardment lasted four 



204 The Strategy of the Great War 

hours and when the support troops moved forward 
there were no Russian trenches left. Dimitrieff's army 
melted away. The Biala River line, in front of Gorlice, 
was completely uncovered. Nor was Dimitrieff able 
to make a stand at the next river, the Wisloka, or at the 
Wistok, still farther back. 

Brusiloff's rear was now exposed. By a rapid retreat 
he extricated himself, losing only one division. His 
army and Dimitrieff's eventually rallied on the line of the 
lower San. But the Russians couldn't hold on that 
line. They lost Jaroslav and Przemysl and retreated 
again in confusion to positions covering Lemberg. 

The battle of the Dunajec and the operations di- 
rectly following it lost the Russians well over one hun- 
dred thousand prisoners. Yet conditions which applied 
only on the Eastern Front had made Mackensen's 
new offensive method seem more destructive and ir- 
resistible than it really was. It caught the Russian 
armies at a moment when their fighting strength was 
fast ebbing away. German power in artillery was 
magnified by extraordinary Russian weakness in that 
all-important arm. 

The. Russian armies began the war relatively better 
armed and better supplied with munitions than they 
had been in any previous war. The army reforms af- 
ter the Japanese campaigns had borne fruit. But no 



The Creation of Mittel-Europa 205 

European General Staff had clearly foreseen the re- 
quirements of a war of nations. And when it came 
to making up unexpected deficiencies Russia was at 
an enormous disadvantage because of her isolated 
position and her backwardness industrially. 

In the early months of 1914 there were plenty of 
rifles and machine guns. The Russian field artillery 
was excellent in quality and lavishly served. Com- 
petent Austrian military writers like Roda-Roda noted 
that the Russian field artillery at that time was su- 
perior to the Austrian and expressed great surprise at 
so unwelcome a discovery. 

But Russia had not anticipated the enormous wast- 
age of eight months of almost continuous fighting. By 
the spring of 191 5 infantry reinforcements were arriv- 
ing at the front unarmed. Rifles had already been 
taken away from the supply and transport organiza- 
tions. Now they had to be taken away from the 
reserves in the training areas. Before this period no 
rifles had been salvaged on the battlefields. By the 
end of 19 1 5 the effects of the crisis in small arms de- 
liveries were shown in the fact that the Russian troops 
in the firing line were using four kinds of rifles — Rus- 
sian, Austrian, Japanese, and Mexican. Troops in the 
rear were using French, English, and Italian types and 
old Berdan rifles, with lead bullets. 



2o6 The Strategy of the Great War 

At the beginning of the war each infantry regiment 
had eight machine guns. This allotment was increased 
in the case of some regiments. But with the multi- 
plication of regiments the higher ratio was difficult to 
maintain and the supply of machine gun ammunition 
was often short. Notwithstanding these handicaps 
the Russian infantry generally made a good showing 
against German and Austro-Hungarian infantry. But 
the infantry lacked proper artillery support. The 
field artillery had shot away most of its stock of ammu- 
nition by January, 191 5. 

General Basil Gourko, at one time chief of the Rus- 
sian Imperial Staff and at another time commander-in- 
chief of the western armies, says in his book. War and 
Revolution in Russia: 

For months [in 191 5] batteries in action daily 
did not receive more than four shells per gun per day. 
Empty parks were then brought up and there were 
cases where a battery used its last reserve stocks. 
An army corps would receive no more than one 
thousand shells at one delivery and would not know 
the date when another delivery would be made. 
By this time the army commanders understood that 
the shortage of munitions was not a creation of 
overcaution, but a sad reality. 

Under-equipment in field artillery was of little con- 
sequence, so long as there were not enough shells to 



The Creation of Mittel-Europa 207 

serve existing batteries. The real plight of the Rus- 
sian armies is presented illuminatingly in General 
Gourko's remark that there were some compensations 
in the dearth of ammunition. For he says that if 
shells had been supplied as lavishly in the winter of 
1914-15 as they were in the first months of the war, 
there would have been in the spring of 19 15 hardly a 
field gun left fit to be fired. The Russians would 
have been just as unable to replace the worn-out pieces 
as they were to add to them before they were worn out. 
With the heavy artillery (which could hardly be 
classified as heavy, when compared with Mackensen's 
monster howitzers) the situation was even worse. On 
this point Gourko testifies: 



But if the Russian artillery had a shortage in field 
gun shells the lack of shells for the heavier guns was 
even more pronounced. In 191 5 cases were known 
where heavy batteries were sent to the rear ostensibly 
for repair, but actually because of lack of ammuni- 
tion for them. This position gradually got better, 
but nevertheless it was only in the sprhig of igiy that 
the different armies were made happy by being able 
to reckon on having several tens of thousands of 
shells for the six-inch guns and about one hundred 
thousand 4.8-inch trench mortar bombs; and this 
in comparison with the hundreds of shells which 
were supplied in 191 4, and even in 191 5, might be 
considered satisfactory. 



208 The Strategy of the Great War 

But in the spring of 191 7 Russia was virtually out 
of the war. 

At the battle of the Dunajec Mackensen's heavy 
artillery is estimated to have used seven hundred 
thousand shells. And by November, 191 4, the Ger- 
mans were employing twelve-inch guns in field opera- 
tions, while the Russians had nothing heavier than 
six-inch guns until the spring of 191 6. 

The Dunajec therefore brutally uncovered Russia's 
military weakness — a weakness which could not pos- 
sibly be overcome except through an effective linking 
up of the Eastern and Western Allied Fronts. It was 
evident after Dimitrieff's defeat at Gorlice and Brusi- 
loff's retreat to Lemberg that the Germans had an 
attack which the Russians were powerless to stop. 
Falkenhayn could repeat the Dunajec operation at 
will and force a Russian retirement eastward which 
would end only T^hen the victors were halted either by 
political considerations or by the physical difficulties 
of pursuit. 

After Przemysl was retaken by the Germans and the 
San was forced the Russians made a temporary stand 
on the Grodek line, covering Lemberg. Mackensen 
didn't try to break this line. He turned it on the 
northern end by battering his way to Rawa Russka, 
where Russky had broken Auffenberg's defence of 



The Creation of Mittel-Europa 209 

Lemberg in September, 191 4. The Galician capital 
fell on June 226.. Its loss and the loss of Rawa Russka 
exposed the Russian armies in the Warsaw salient to 
a flank attack coming from the south. 

This salient was beyond the true Russian military- 
frontier and had been held since August, 1914, only 
because the Russian armies had covered it on its weak 
southern face by overrunning Galicia. Now three 
groups of German- Austro-Hungarian armies were clos- 
ing in on the enveloped Polish angle, of which Warsaw 
was the apex. The most dangerous attack was that 
from the south, in the direction of Lublin. Lublin 
fell on July 30th. A few days earlier Hindenburg 
broke through the Narew River line, on the northern 
face, and Prince Leopold of Bavaria got across the 
Vistula north of Ivangorod. Warsaw was evacuated 
on August 4th. By August 15th all the Russian 
armies were out of Poland. 

The Grand Duke Nicholas planned to hold the Rus- 
sian line of mobilization along the Bug River through 
Brest-Litovsk to Grodno and Kovno and thence north 
to Riga. But the momentum of the German attack 
could not be checked. Kovno surrendered under 
circumstances which suggested collusion with the 
enemy. The Brest-Litovsk line was punctured, and 
a new retreat became inevitable. Nicholas was re- 



210 The Strategy of the Great War 

lieved of command on September 5th, and the Russian 
armies drifted back under the Czar's orders until they 
stood about October ist on the Dvina River, east of 
Vilna, east of the Pripet Marshes, and, in the south, 
between the fortresses of Rovno and Dubno. In the 
great retreat Russia had lost from 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 
men. 

The German pursuit now slowed down. It didn't 
stop because of military exhaustion. The German 
hold-up was more or less deliberate. Germany was 
about to turn south, where the stage had been set for 
a spectacular fall campaign in the Balkans. She had 
dealt Russia a crushing blow, from which there would 
be no genuine or lasting recovery. She had demon- 
strated her vast superiority in the field in which 
victory would bring her the most practical results. 
She was satisfied for the present to digest her Eastern 
conquests. 

If the German military leaders had deliberately 
planned to subordinate all other war aims to the crea- 
tion of a Teuton Mittel-Europa, the Russian campaign 
of 191 5 would remain a monument to their perspicacity. 
It would have blotted out the memory of German 
failures on the Western Front. It would have proved 
that the Great General Staff had realized Germany's 
military limitations and had resolutely contracted the 



The Creation of Mittel-Europa 211 

scope of the war, confining its purpose to bulwarking 
Germany's position in Central Europe and complet- 
ing in 1 9 14-18 the work of 1864, 1866, and 1870-71. 
But subsequent events disclosed that the German 
High Command regarded the operations in the East 
simply as an interlude between Western offensives. 

The Russian campaign of 191 5 was not altogether 
imposing as a military achievement. It did not com- 
pare in brilliance to Foch's 191 8 offensive in France 
and Belgium, to Franchet d'Esperey's in the Balkans, 
or to Allenby's in Palestine. Given the enormous 
technical superiority of the German armies, they 
should have accomplished more. Falkenhayn and 
Hindenburg were also pupils of Count Schlieffen. 
They had the Cannae formula always in mind. But 
they didn't work it out any more successfully than 
Moltke the Younger had worked it out in France. 

The Russian armies in the Warsaw salient were ripe 
for envelopment. At several stages in the course of 
the great retreat they were in extreme peril. Macken- 
sen might have blocked the road east from Warsaw, 
if he had reached Lublin a little sooner. Again at 
Vilna where the Russians, under the Czar's urgings, 
made too obstinate a stand, Hindenburg had them 
surrounded on two sides, with his cavalry in their rear. 
But the Russian tradition of steadfastness and cool- 



212 The Strategy of the Great War 

ness in retreat again vindicated itself. The cavalry 
divisions behind Vilna could not close the trap. The 
Russian infantry slipped out with moderate losses. 

This failure to make the Cannae theory work puzzled 
the German critics. One of the frankest and most 
competent of them, the military writer of the Frank- 
furter Zeitung, admitted that the same phenomenon 
occurred in all the great German enveloping opera- 
tions : at the Marne, in Poland, in Serbia, in Rumania, 
and at Caporetto. The mouth of the sack in which 
the enemy was caught never was closed. Nor could 
this writer find any convincing explanation of German 
failure to realize the Cannae conception. He could 
only advance the excuses of inadequate transport and 
congestion of communications. 

This exculpation has received the stamp of high 
German official authority. For Lieutenant-General 
Baron Freytag-Loringhoven engagingly puts forth 
something very like it when he says in his Deductions 
from the World War: 

It was proved on the Marne that the age of armies 
numbering millions, with their improved armament 
and the widely extended fronts which they necessitate, 
engenders very special conditions. On the Vistula 
and in Galicia in October, 1914, at Lodz and after 
the winter battle at the Masurian Lakes, as well as 
in the autumn of 191 5 at Vilna, the same phenomena 



The Creation of Mittel-Europa 213 

always made their appearance, even though the 
conditions of extent and character of the ground, 
as well as the main course of events, were in each 
case completely different. Forces which suffice to 
achieve victory and even to destroy strong sections 
of the enemy's forces prove inadequate for the 
attainment of the complete success which is desired. 

But this was not the case with the Allies in Palestine 
or in Macedonia in 191 8, or with Foch's final offensive. 
In the first two "complete success" was attained. In 
the last it was on the point of attainment when Luden- 
dorff asked for an armistice. 

General Hoffmann, one of the ablest of Hindenburg's 
lieutenants, has attributed the comparative failure of 
the Eastern campaign of 191 5 to Falkenhayn's poor 
judgment in not directing his main attack against 
Kovno, instead of Warsaw. Kovno was the key to the 
Russian northern front. Had it fallen first, Hoffmann 
holds, the Russian armies exposed in the Warsaw 
salient and in Western Galicia would have been en- 
veloped and a peace of surrender would have been 
forced on Russia by the end of 191 5. 

But here again the factor of German sluggishness 
enters. Could that sluggishness have been overcome 
any more successfully by an offensive in the north than 
by an offensive in the south? German progress was 
impeded by an over-dependence on heavy artillery 



214 The Strategy of the Great War 

and special "shock troop" formations. Armies which 
use 1 2 -inch guns in the field must be slow on their 
feet. And this fault of slowness was not overcome 
by the German commanders even as late as 191 8, 
when the warfare of positions had ended and semi-open 
warfare had returned. 

Germany didn't achieve on the Russian front a Sedan 
or a Sadowa. She didn't gather the full fruits of her 
military superiority. But her territorial gains enabled 
her to set up on that front the frame work of a Teuton 
Middle Europe. 

On the Baltic coast the Prussian frontiers had been 
extended to the Gulf of Riga. Within the German 
lines, south from the Gulf of Riga to the border of 
Galicia, were included the province of Courland, the gov- 
ernments of Kovno, Grodno, and Vilna, all of Poland, 
and a part of Volhynia. The area of the territory over- 
run exceeded one hundred thousand square miles. Its 
population was in excess of twenty millions. In a five 
months' campaign Germany had expanded her own 
area nearly a half and added nearly a third to her 
population. 

The assimilation of these districts would not have 
presented any great difficulties to a conqueror with 
any moral fitness for world empire. Even Germany, 
harsh and antipathetic as her methods were with subject 



The Creation of Mittel-Europa 215 

peoples, might have reconciled the Courlanders, Letts, 
Lithuanians, Poles, and White Russians to a Prussian 
"goose step" regimen; for thev had been accustomed 
to nothing materially better. Courland's aristocracy 
and merchant class were to a large extent German in 
blood and sympathy. The Letts and Lithuanians, 
eager for racial and cultural recognition and dis- 
gusted with Russian repression, were likely to wel- 
come even a shadowy autonomy under a German 
sovereign. 

The Poles had no illusions about the blessings of 
Prussian rule. They hated the Prussians even more 
than they hated the Russians. They still dreamed of 
a revival of the glories of the ancient Polish kingdom. 
But if real political independence was out of the ques- 
tion for them, they would probably have given a passive 
assent to the creation of a Polish dependency, including 
Galicia, under a Hapsburg archduke. While Berlin 
wrangled with Vienna over this reasonable solution che 
Poles were quiescent. The country remained tranquil 
under a three-year German occupation, although still 
hopeful of deliverance. 

After October i, 191 5, Germany's only preoccupa- 
tion on the Russian front was to organize her new pos- 
sessions in a political and military way. Opportunity 
now called her armies to the south, where Mittel-Europa 



21 6 The Strategy of the Great War 

was to be rounded out and an Asian attachment added 
to it. 

On this front, too, Austria-Hungary needed to be 
safeguarded. She had failed disastrously in two efforts 
to conquer Serbia. With Italy attacking her on the 
Isonzo, her flank on the Danube had to be protected 
from a possible Allied offensive out of the Balkans. 

In the spring of 191 5 Germany was forced to look 
on helplessly while the Allied fleets tried to rush the 
Dardanelles. The Turks were left to work out their 
own salvation on the Gallipoli peninsula. 

But in the Balkans that year all the breaks of the 
game were with Germany. The Allied attempt to 
reach Constantinople ended in humiliation and dis- 
aster. Bungling diplomacy completed the wreck of 
Allied hopes. Greece was lost to the Entente by 
Constantine's betrayal of his people. The crafty 
Ferdinand of Bulgaria duped the Allied governments 
and secretly came to terms with Berlin. Serbia was 
left deserted and isolated. Rumania, not ready to 
fight, had relapsed into strict neutrality. The stage 
had set itself for a Teuton offensive in the Balkans 
which would clear the peninsula and link up an ac- 
complished Teuton Middle Europe with an inchoate 
Teuton Middle Asia. 

Mackensen, with his 12-inch field guns and his 



The Creation of Mittel-Europa 217 

elite "phalanx" troops, arrived on the Danube about 
the middle of September. Bulgaria mobilized on Sep- 
tember 23d, although still protesting neutrality. The 
Serbs wanted to attack Bulgaria at once, but were 
withheld by Delcasse and Sir Edward Grey. On Oc- 
tober 2d Ferdinand threw off the mask and announced 
his adhesion to the Teuton alliance. 

Serbia's situation was tragic. She had now to face 
a German-Austro-Hungarian attack from the north 
and a Bulgarian attack from the east. Her armies 
were second to none in fighting quality. But they 
were much too weak in numbers to stop the invaders. 
Nor was there any hope of Allied aid reaching them 
in time. Greece had a treaty with Serbia binding her 
to go to the latter 's assistance against Bulgaria. Ve- 
nizelos tried to live up to it. He mobilized the Greek 
army and invited the Allies to send troops to Salonica. 
But Constantine repudiated the treaty, forced Venizelos 
out of office, and then protested against an Allied use 
of Salonica as a base for relief operations. The French 
and British did get about 125,000 troops into Grecian 
Macedonia. But they advanced up the Vardar Valley 
too slowly to prevent the Bulgarians breaking through 
from the east and cutting the single railroad connecting 
Salonica with Middle and Northern Serbia. 

While the Bulgarians interposed between the Serbians 



2i8 The Strategy of the Great War 

in the north and Sarrail's forces, which were seeking 
to extricate them, Mackensen conducted a leisurely 
advance south from Belgrade. His objective was 
Nish, where the Vienna-Constantinople trunk line 
branches off to Sofia. Using his heavy guns and 
sparing his infantry, he gradually pushed the main 
Serbian army to the south-west, compelling it to retreat 
through the Albanian mountains to the Adriatic. In 
less than two months Serbia was a memory. The 
government was in exile. The troops who survived 
the ordeal of the Albanian retreat were taken to Corfu 
to recuperate and many months later were transferred 
to the Salonica front. 

The British and French forces which had pushed up 
the Vardar Valley found themselves in peril and re- 
treated into Greece, where Sarrail spent the winter 
constructing the entrenched camp north of Salonica. 
Here an Allied army of from 200,000 to 500,000 was tied 
up for nearly three years, clinging to the only foothold 
left to the Allies in the Balkan Peninsula. All the 
rest of it save Rumania (now as much cut off as Russia) 
and Greece (whose court and government were pro- 
German) had been incorporated in the Teuton Empire, 
stretching uninterruptedly from the Baltic to the 
lower reaches of the Tigris. 

Such was the astounding German achievement of 



The Creation of Mittel-Europa 219 

1915- By alliance and conquest the essentials of the 
Pan-German dream had been realized. Germany's 
European position had been secured. And the way 
was also paved to the establishment of a German Asian 
empire rivalling Russia's or Great Britain's. 

Speaking broadly, the ends of a moderate and rational 
German military policy had now been attained. The 
Teuton state called into being at the end of 191 5 was 
one which needed no sea power and no overseas colo- 
nies. It could not be strangled by hostile sea power. 
It took intelligent account of the advantages and the 
limitations of Germany's geographical position. It 
could be maintained by land power alone. And Ger- 
man land power was ample to maintain it. It could 
also be defended and enlarged at slight cost, because 
of Germany's vast superiority in miHtary organization 
over Russia, her sole competitor for mastery in Eastern 
Europe and Central Asia. Germany was the victor 
on the face of the war map. All she needed to do was 
to hold fast to what she had won. 

But the original confusions of German military policy 
persisted. The illusions of grandeur, of world power, 
of naval supremacy, of overseas colonies, which the 
Germany of WilUam II cherished, obscured the vision 
of bobh statesmen and soldiers. Hindenburg came 
closest to grasping the realities of the military situa- 



220 The Strategy of the Great War 

tion. But he was not yet in power in January, 1916, 
and by the time he came into power Ludendorff had 
assumed the right to speak for him. 

Falkenhayn, still chief -of -staff, took the superficial 
view that having cleared and stabilized the Eastern 
Front he could afford to resume the offensive in the 
West. He was confident of repeating at the expense 
of France the easy Russian and Balkan triumphs of 
191 5. Hence the futile and wasteful experiment at 
Verdun, where Germany incurred ten times the losses 
which the capture of Riga would have involved and 
probably two or three times the losses which would have 
been incurred in breaking the entire Russian northern 
front and capturing Petrograd. And had the Germans 
entered Petrograd in 191 6, Russia might have been 
put out of the war a year earlier, either by surrender 
or revolution, and the military situation of the En- 
tente would have become desperate. Destiny had 
other plans, however, which were to be fulfilled through 
the arrogance and wrong-headedness of German 
leadership. 



CHAPTER XII 

JOFFRE's "nibbling" — THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
POSITIONAL WARFARE 

From January, 1915, to the end of February, 1916, 
Germany renounced the offensive on the Western 
Front. She was content to hold fast there while her 
armies in the east were crushing Russia and Serbia 
and hewing out the boundaries of the new Teuton 
Central European and West Asian state. 

There were only two departures (both nominal) from 
the German policy of defence. In January, Kluck 
attacked and roughly handled a couple of French 
divisions which had crossed the Aisne River north of 
Soissons and whose communications had been imperilled 
by a flood. In April came the second German drive 
for Ypres. This succeeded far beyond German expec- 
tations. It was intended only as a demonstration, 
and when, through the use, for the first time, of chlorine 
gas waves, a French colonial division north-east of 
Ypres was stampeded, leaving a big gap in the Allied 
line, the Germans had no reserves at hand to exploit 



222 The Strategy of the Great War 

the victory. Here the obstinate valour of the Cana- 
dian troops, whose left flank was uncovered by the 
flight of the Colonials, prevented a disaster and saved 
Ypres. But the Allies had to yield practically all 
of the ridges east of the city, to retake which in 
191 7 cost the British army a long and bloody summer 
campaign. 

These two interruptions apart, the offensive in the 
West remained for fourteen months in the hands of 
the Allies. The Allied staffs had every opportunity 
to try out the German defence and to develop an ade- 
quate counter-blow to Germany's attack on Russia. 
But no such counter-blow was developed. Entente 
strategy remained through all this period tentative, 
unformed, and rudimentary. It embodied no more 
formidable conception than that plan of scattering, 
experimental attacks which received the somewhat 
derisory name of "nibbling." To paraphrase the fa- 
miHar saying that Nero fiddled while Rome burned, 
while Russian military power was being shattered in 
GaHcia and Poland, the French and British on the West 
Front "nibbled." 

This policy was in part compulsory, dictated by the 
cramped position in which the French found themselves 
after the Marne and Flanders campaigns. Joffre's 
enforced "nibbling" in 191 5 was the direct outcome 



Joffre's "Nibbling" 223 

of the mistakes in strategy in 1914, which had left 
so large an area in Northern France in the possession 
of the Germans. The natural preoccupation of the 
French was to defend their own soil and to recover 
their lost departments. 

But the psychological effect of this preoccupation was 
to narrow the strategical outlook of the French High 
Command and to make it distrustful of any ventures 
whatever, which might reduce Allied strength in the 
West. It undoubtedly felt a sense of rehef when the 
Germans carried their offensive to the East. But it 
didn't grasp at once the real meaning of the German 
eastern attack or realize that the true counter-irritant 
to it was not a succession of local offensives on the 
West Front, but an attack on Constantinople. The 
critical theatre of war for the Allies in 191 5 was Gal- 
lipoH and the Balkans. France awoke to that situa- 
tion too late — even later than Great Britain did. In 
September, when the chance to take Constantinople had 
passed and Serbia was beyond rescue, the French sent 
to Salonica more than enough divisions to have seized 
Bulair, the neck of the Gallipoli peninsula, and cut 
off the Turkish armies defending the forts at the 
Dardanelles Narrows. 

The French, moreover, were not in a state of mind 
early in 191 5 to credit Germany with a complete 



224 The Strategy of the Great War 

cessation of offensive operations on the Western 
Front. They believed that the Germans would turn 
back from the East sooner or later — that their real 
objective was Paris, not Moscow or Petrograd. And 
that assumption was verified a year later at Verdun. 

For a year to come, possibly for two years, the French 
knew that they would have to bear the brunt of any 
German attacks on the West. Great Britain was 
slowly getting ready to make war. Kitchener's Three 
Million Volunteers were just beginning to assemble. 
They could not be expected to appear in the fighting 
line until 1916. Kitchener had himself intimated that 
Great Britain's strength would not be fully developed 
until 191 7. To the French mind the military problem 
therefore presented itself as a fight for time — a cautious 
bridging over of the interval in which the British 
forces were being equipped and trained. 

But there was a fallacy in this view — the same 
fallacy which underlay the theory that the Allies 
could win the war through mere attrition. The 
Entente Powers, after Italy joined them, had a more 
than two-to-one superiority in crude man-power. 
They could wear the Teuton Powers down, if attrition 
worked steadily and blindly. But it couldn't work 
that way. Time fought for the Entente so far as the 
utilization of British man-power was concerned. But 



Joffre's "Nibbling" 225 

it fought against the Entente so far as the utilization 
of Russia's vastly greater man-power was concerned. 

The great stake in the 191 5 campaigns was Russia. 
And a strict defence on the Western Front, with occa- 
sional "nibbling" offensives, which produced almost 
negligible results on small sectors of that front, could 
do nothing to save Russia to the Entente. Once 
Germany, at a very moderate cost, had eliminated 
Russia, with her population of 170,000,000, the Allied 
preponderance in crude man-power would disappear. 
Attrition would become a sword cutting both ways. A 
wary fight for time would avail nothing; tor, thereafter, 
the Entente would be fighting against time, and not 
Germany. 

In 1 91 5, after Italy entered the war, the AlHes had 
probably a relatively greater superiority over the Ger- 
mans on the West Front than at any other period up 
to the time when the American reinforcement became 
available. But a confused perception of the aims of 
German strategy and the lack of unified command 
prevented any advantageous use of that superiority. 
Italy had more troops than could be employed at once 
on the Trieste-Trentino front. And, as events were to 
prove, the ItaHan attempt to break through the Aus- 
trian mountain barrier was always a hopeless under- 
taking. France and Great Britain lost together about 



226 The Strategy of the Great War 

two hundred thousand men in the "nibbling" opera- 
tions of 1 91 5 in Flanders, Artois, and Champagne. And 
these troops, with Italy's overplus, if dispatched to 
Gallipoli, would probably have been able to cut a way 
to Constantinople, thus rescuing Russia and Serbia. 

When, in the fall of 1863, Lee, having the benefit 
of interior lines, transferred Longstreet's corps to 
Bragg at Chickamauga, Meade countered by sending 
two corps to reinforce the Army of the Cumberland. In 
a similar exigency no troops were withdrawn from the 
Allied Western Front to support the Gallipoli expedi- 
tion. Seven divisions or more were sent to the ^gean 
from England and the Allied strategists of the Western 
school never ceased to complain that they were not 
used instead of France in operations like that at Neuve 
Chapelle and Loos, which could produce only local 
and negligible results at a pathetically disproportionate 
cost. 

The 1915 "nibbles" on the West Front strikingly 
disclosed the poverty of Entente strategy. But they 
were possibly an unavoidable phase in the education 
of armies suddenly called upon to face the problems 
of grand scale trench warfare. War had taken a new 
turn, which the General Staffs had not foreseen. Its 
difficulties had to be understood before they could be 
mastered. The Germans solved them in the East 



Joffre's "Nibbling" 227 

with astonishing ease, because German technical and 
mechanical superiority on that front was overwhelming. 
In the West, where that superiority was less marked 
in the beginning and steadily dwindled, neither side 
solved them until near the close of the war. 

Neuve Chapelle was the first Allied effort to break 
through an enemy trench system. This village lies 
about five miles north-west of La Bassee, in French 
Flanders, and about twelve miles west of Lille. The 
purpose of the attack was to open the road to Lille, 
which was the chief German base in this region. 

The British introduced here the principle of massed 
artillery fire, sufficient in intensity to destroy the shal- 
low trenches of that day, and raze all the barbed-wire 
entanglements in front of them. The bombardment 
on the morning of March lo, 191 5, was completely 
successful on a narrow front opposite Neuve Chapelle. 
But farther north the obstructions were not destroyed. 
The British troops in that section of the battlefield 
were held up, and thrown into confusion. Only a small 
wedge had been driven into the German line. There 
was a delay of four hours and a half in the attempt 
to widen it out. On the northern face, toward Aubers, 
the Germans had ample time to rally and the original 
opening was soon closed up. 

By the evening of March loth the operation had 



228 The Strategy of the Great War 

definitely failed, although fighting continued through 
March nth. The British casualties were 12,811 — 
about one fourth of the forces engaged. Nothing had 
been gained except the knowledge that heavy artillery 
could blast away the front lines of a trench system, 
but that extreme precision in the follow-up infantry 
movement was needed to carry the attack through. 

In May the French began an offensive south-west of 
Lens, with that important coal-mining and railroad 
centre as its objective. The British had a small part 
in this, attacking east of Festubert and losing eight 
thousand men in a few hours because of deficient 
artillery preparation. The French operation was in 
the hands of Foch, That was ample guarantee that 
everything was done which could have been done to 
insure a fair test of the value of the "nibbling" process. 
The fighting lasted from May 8th until early in June 
and goes under the general name of the Battle of Artois. 

Foch made considerable progress at first. He cap- 
tured the famous Labyrinth, a German trench strong- 
hold just south of Vimy Ridge, which covered Lens 
from the south-west. He also cleared the Notre Dame 
de Lorette Ridge, to the west of Lens. But if he ever 
had any large strategic purpose in view— that, for 
instance, of breaking through the bulwarks of the 
German line above Arras, and compelling a consider- 



Joffre's ''Nibbling*' 229 

able German retirement — he failed utterly in attaining 
it. He succeeded in penetrating the German line on 
a narrow front. But this dent could neither be widened 
out nor deepened. 

The French discovered again that positions subjected 
to a "drum fire" bombardment became untenable. 
It was easy for the infantry to advance immediately 
after the artillery assault and capture prisoners and 
guns. But the existence of supporting positions on the 
flank and in the rear of the area of bombardment 
made the cost of expanding an initial gain almost 
prohibitive. 

The French never imitated on a great scale the 
German example of creating special shock troops to 
follow up artillery attacks. In the long run this was 
good policy. The German method lowered the quality 
of the ordinary formations. It compelled a commander 
to depend more and more on a small percentage of his 
fighting force. Acting on the offensive he could, per- 
haps, afford to do this, holding the ordinary battalions 
as reserves and supports. But when the Germans 
were thrown on the defensive, after July i8, 1918, 
the dangers of the system became patent. There were 
not enough elite formations to go around and the bur- 
den of meeting the Allied offensive fell in many in- 
stances on organizations whose morale and efficiency 



230 The Strategy of the Great War 

had been greatly impaired by the weeding out of their 
shock material. It was an Allied army of even quality 
which defeated a German army of uneven quality in 
the final battles of 191 8. 

The failure at Neuve Chapelle uncovered the fact 
that the British army was poorly supphed with muni- 
tions for the heavy guns and lacked the high explosive 
shells needed to destroy field trenches of the more 
elaborate kind. The War Ofhce had been sending 
shrapnel to the front. But shrapnel was now almost 
as useless in preparing an infantry attack against field 
positions as machine gun or rifle fire was. The Allies 
had greatly underrated the stiffness of the German 
intrenched defence. Mackensen might smother the 
relatively weak enemy lines in Galicia and Poland with 
his monster guns and high explosives. The Allies 
lacked these essentials of the new mode of warfare. 
And they were confronted by an enemy much more 
advanced in the technique of trench fighting than they 
were. 

All through the summer the French and British 
worked feverishly building heavy field guns, manufac- 
turing high explosive shells and trench bombs, mul- 
tiplying their machine-gun equipment, turning out 
trench helmets and masks, and otherwise catching up 
with the requirements of the warfare of fixed positions. 



Joffre's ^'Nibbling" 231 

In the fall they were ready to "nibble" again. Two 
simultaneous offensives were planned for the last week 
of September. The first, in Artois, under Foch and 
Sir John French, aimed at Lens, which was to be en- 
veloped by the capture of Vimy Ridge, on the south, 
and the cutting of the Lens-La Bassee highroad, on 
the north. The second, in Champagne, under Petain, 
had as its objective, Vouziers, the chief German rail- 
road base in the "Dusty" Champagne region. Both 
these attempts were made with large armies, well 
supphed with artillery. If both had succeeded the 
German armies in the great salient with its apex at 
Noyon would have been put in peril and a broad German 
retirement would have become necessary. 

The Champagne operation was the principal one. 
It was preceded by the heaviest "drum fire" of the 
war up to that date. The first German Hne was de- 
molished. The French infantry cleared it with trifling 
losses, making large captures in guns and prisoners. 
But beyond the first trench line was a second, which 
the infantry, unsupported by "drum fire," couldn't 
clear. As so often happened in this early phase of 
rigid positional warfare, many of the units which 
penetrated the second line never came back. They 
were cut off or annihilated. Delay in bringing forward 
the artillery allowed enemy reserves to pour in. In 



232 The Strategy of the Great War 

the second stage of the operation the assailants suffered 
enormous losses. 

The Champagne offensive lasted from September 
25th until October 2d. Then it was abandoned. 
Petain had advanced about a mile and a half on a front 
of about fifteen miles. He had taken twenty-five 
thousand prisoners and 150 guns. But he had hardly 
gotten a start toward Vouziers. He hadn't even cut 
the little auxiliary railroad in the German rear, which 
ran through Somme-Py. He lost something like 
120,000 men. The German loss was probably no greater. 
Strategically the effect of this costly offensive was nil. 
It didn't shake the Germans out of the Noyon sahent. 
It contributed little or nothing toward a solution of 
the problem of trench war deadlock. 

In Artois the Champagne experience was duplicated. 
Foch, advancing north-east toward Lens, on Septem- 
ber 25th, took Souchez and pushed toward the summit 
of Vimy Ridge. But he was unable to clear the ridge 
and in a few days was obliged to drop his offensive 
and go to the aid of the British, who were hard pressed 
to the north of Lens. The British attack had opened 
brilliantly. The formidable Hohenzollern redoubt, cov- 
ering the Lens-La Bassee road, was taken by assault 
and the road itself was crossed at Hulluch. Farther 
south the British took Loos and Hill 70, penetrating 



Joffre's "Nibbling" 233 

the last German trench hne. Lens was in great danger 
of envelopment from the north. 

But, as at Neuve Chapelle, the organization of the 
attack broke down. The Scottish troops who had 
passed beyond Loos were not supported. They suffered 
severely and were pushed back. By September 27th 
the Germans were back in their original lines north 
of Lens. The British losses in the Loos offensive were 
estimated at sixty thousand. Only three thousand 
prisoners and twenty-five guns were taken in the first 
phase of the assault. The Loos disaster caused the re- 
tirement of Sir John French as British commander-in- 
chief. But .the failure was not essentially his. It was 
the natural failure of an insufficiently trained army to 
master the enormous technical difficulties of offensive 
trench warfare. 

The Germans had surmounted these difficulties in 
their demonstration against Ypres. But they wisely 
refrained in 191 5 from risking any serious offensives 
in the West. The trench defence on that front was 
still too strong to be broken. It was sound policy 
on the part of the Germans to let the Allies assume 
the burden of experimentation. And the Allies in 
191 5 still lacked the power to do anything but "nibble." 

Trench warfare involved, apparently, an abandon- 
ment of all the technique of modern military science. 



234 The Strategy of the Great War 

It was a reversion to primitive methods of combat — 
to fighting at close quarters with hand grenades, bay- 
onets, and knives, to the siege tactics of the ancients. 
The front trench lines ran within speaking distance 
of each other. The zone of fire, which had been 
enlarged by modern weapons to miles, was suddenly 
contracted again to yards. Contact between the 
opposing forces was continuous and fire of some sort 
was incessant. All the disused arts of destruction 
at short range were revived. 

But the resemblance to aboriginal warfare was super- 
ficial and misleading. An enormous development in 
the rapidity of small arms fire, through the invention 
of the machine gun, and in the power of artillery had 
driven the infantry under the ground. But military 
science had not bankrupted itself. It had not become 
stagnant. It had destroyed open warfare, with all 
its minutiae of technique, in order to create a barren 
trench warfare deadlock. Now its mission was to 
overcome the inertia of the rigid warfare of positions 
by destroying the value of the trench. Artillery had 
brought the underground trench fortress into being. 
It had now to undo its work by making the underground 
fortress as vulnerable as it had made the fortress above 
ground. 

The trench system — especially the deep permanent 



Joffre's ^'Nibbling'* 235 

trench system of 191 5 and 191 6 — gave the defensive 
a relative advantage over the offensive such as it had 
seldom before possessed. But since it is in the nature 
of war that the offensive shall eventually outstrip the 
defensive, that superiority could not last. The tussle 
between the resisting power of the massive dugout 
and the destructive power of artillery continued for 
nearly two years. Then the dugout was converted 
into a trap, as land fortresses, like Liege, Namur, 
Antwerp, and Przemysl, had been. When this was 
accomplished a return to something like the old condi- 
tions of the warfare of movement was close at hand. 

Early in 191 5 the trench systems were comparatively 
simple in construction and shallow in depth. Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel Paul Azan, of the French army, who 
fought in Flanders and at the Labyrinth, south-west 
of Lens, and came to the United States later, as a 
military instructor, described the earlier system in his 
book The Warfare of Today. He enumerates among 
the elements of a position: 

1. A first line trench, which is continuous, pre- 
ceded by listening posts and protected by accessory 
defences. 

2. A doubling trench (sometimes miscalled a 
"cover trench") fifty to one hundred yards behind 
the first line trench. 

3. Transversal trenches, varying in number. 



236 The Strategy of the Great War 

4. A support-trench, five hundred to eight hun- 
dred yards behind the first hne trench. 

5. A line of redoubts (sometimes miscalled 
"reserve trenches") not continuous, which is often 
used both to stop the enemy's advance and to protect 
important groups of artillery. 

6. Boyaux, running from the rear up to the first 
line trench and serving for communicating between 
the various trenches, which are, with the possible 
exception of the transversal ones, roughly parallel 
to one another. 

"Thus," Colonel Azan adds, "a subterranean city is 
dug out little by little, echeloned in depth, and con- 
tinually improved in point of comfort and security." 

There were few comforts at first — and seldom any 
in unfortunate regions, like Flanders, where the sub- 
soil is always water-soaked. But as these underground 
communities grew and burrowed deeper into the earth 
concrete and lumber were used in increasing qualities 
and living conditions were vastly bettered. Floors 
were laid in the dugouts, electric lighting was in- 
stalled, and in many cases there were luxuries like 
bathing facilities, household furniture, and pianos. 

The relatively shallow trench systems of 191 5 and 
191 6 were strongly held. On both sides defensive tac- 
tics were the same. The idea was to prevent a breach 
in the line at almost any cost. Troops sufficient to 
counter-attack and recover a lost first trench line were 



Joffre's "Nibbling" 237 

always close at hand. For that reason even the grand 
scale Allied offensives in Artois and Champagne pro- 
duced only an immaterial territorial gain. Nor would 
the German second attack on Ypres have re-won the 
heights north-east of that city, except that the Allied 
defence was paralyzed for a time by the terrifjdng 
effects of the German chlorine gas. 

Rigidity in defence became a fetish. It looked, for 
a time, as if the war would have to be fought to a finish 
of exhaustion on the long line from the North Sea to 
Switzerland on which the opposing armies had dug in. 

But this ideal of rigidity gradually defeated itself. 
While the trench systems were becoming more elaborate 
and more permanent in character, the scope and power 
of the artillery attack were increasing by leaps and 
bounds. Under long-continued "drumfire" the front 
line garrisons were obhged to hide in the depths of the 
dugouts. When the infantry advance began a barrage 
was laid down in the rear of the defenders, cutting 
off their retreat and preventing supports from arriving. 
The capture by the French in Champagne of twenty- 
five thousand prisoners, trapped in the front German 
trench system, was the first hint of the peril of holding 
a shallow Hne too rigidly and with large masses of 
troops. 

The initial losses of the French at Verdun and of 



238 The Strategy of the Great War 

the Germans on the Somme reinforced this lesson. 
Thereafter the Germans, who were to remain on the 
defensive on the West all through 191 7, began to alter 
their positional warfare tactics. Trench systems were 
deepened enormously. The fixed trench line of 1915 
became the fixed trench zone of 191 7. The centre of 
resistance was shifted toward the rear. An elastic 
frontal system was organized, the backbone of which 
were the "pill boxes" — concrete outposts fitted up 
with machine guns and manned by small garrisons. 
The function of these concealed small forts was to 
retard an enemy advancing after the artillery prepara- 
tion ceased. If they failed to stop his progress, he 
would soon bring up against the main defensive posi- 
tions a mile or two miles back, where he would be 
subject to counter-attack. Under this defensive scheme 
heavy losses in the forezone were avoided. The main 
action took place, under more favourable conditions 
for the defender, in the middle, or battle zone. 

The zone idea reached its fullest development in 
the construction of the famous Hindenburg Line, 
wrongly so-called. It was not a fortified line, but a 
fortified belt. It is instructive to compare the modest 
trench system of 191 5, sketched by Lieutenant-Colonel 
Azan, with the vast underground fortress, guarding 
Douai, Cambrai, St. Quentin, and La Fere, which the 



Joffre's "Nibbling" 239 

Germans spent nearly two years in building. Lieu- 
tenant-General Baron Ardenne, one of the most promi- 
nent and one of the most optimistic of German military 
critics, wrote of the Hindenburg barrier in September, 
1918: 

The British call this the Hindenburg Line, thereby 
betraying that they completely mistake its real 
character. It is not a line, but a complicated, 
quadratic system of tactical bases and positions, 
reinforced after the manner of a fortification, from 
Cambrai to La Fere — that is to say, over a front with 
a width of sixty kilometres [about thirty-eight miles] 
and a depth up to forty kilometres [twenty-five 
miles]. The enemy, therefore, has to shatter a 
granite block of 2400 square kilometres before he 
would be in a position freely to develop his forces 
and steer them to their higher goals, for overcoming 
the Siegfried position and its collateral positions could 
only form the introduction to further developments 
which would cause the ultimate aims of the Entente 
Powers to retire into crepuscular remoteness. 

Only three weeks after this was written the Hinden- 
burg Line had become a memory. Six weeks after it 
was written Ludendorff was clamouring for an armistice 
as the only means of avoiding a German surrender. 

For formidable and impregnable as it seemed to be 
to those who constructed it, the Hindenburg Zone 
was from the beginning an acknowledgment that the 
offensive was gradually mastering the defensive on 



240 The Strategy of the Great War 

the Western Front. The turning point was reached 
in 1 91 7, when one AUied offensive after another demon- 
strated that the German defence Hnes could be pierced 
to a considerable extent by a sufficiently concentrated 
attack. Cambrai, in November, 191 7, showed that 
an attack could get clear through. 

If it had been conceded that it was fruitless to try 
to hold a forefront line rigidly, how could a middle line 
be expected to hold, merely because of its defensive 
strength? The arrival of the tank ended the value of 
the elastic "pill box" front; for the tanks could drive 
in among the "pill boxes" and silence them. Then 
the midzone of defence would be converted into the 
forezone, and another midzone would have to be 
created further back, out of the field of the artillery 
attack. The phase of fixed positional warfare was 
therefore passing and yielding to the phase of rapidly 
shifting positional warfare. The warfare of movement 
was replacing the deadlock of the trenches. 

Within three years and a half war had again modern- 
ized itself, escaping from an apparent reversion to 
immobility and stagnation. After 191 5 rigid positional 
warfare was to continue for a time. But its paralysis 
was being lifted. In building the colossal Hindenburg 
system the Germans were to discover eventually that 
they had only erected a monument to the past. 



CHAPTER XIII 



VERDUN 



"The epic of Verdun." This French phrase will 
stick because of its felicity. The defence of the ancient 
fortress on the Meuse was Homeric in quality. There 
France met the rudest test of the war with epical 
devotion and fortitude. 

Germany, near the peak of her military development, 
flushed by the extraordinary success of her Eastern 
campaigns, challenged France in February, 1916, to 
an ordeal of endurance. It was to be a sheer competi- 
tion in staying power, both physical and moral. Hin- 
denburg had said that the Russians were not equal to 
a contest in which victory would go to the belligerent 
with "the stronger nerves." His theory had justified 
itself in the East. The Germans now sought to experi- 
ment with it in the West. 

The campaign for Verdun involved no subtleties of 

strategy. Falkenhayn set out to eject the French by 

brute force from one of the strongest positions they 

held between the Swiss border and Arras. And the 
16 241 



242 The Strategy of the Great War 

strength of their positions didn't save the French. 
What stopped Germany was not the rampart of hills, 
forts, and trenches about Verdun, but an ever renewed 
rampart of living men. 

France, still somewhat inferior to Germany in weight 
of artillery, but fully equal in the discipline and valour 
of her infantry, didn't shrink from the ordeal. At 
times it seemed as if the lines around Verdun would 
break imder the stupendous German pounding. They 
sagged; but they were never broken. After a hand- 
to-hand struggle which lasted many months French 
doggedness triumphed. 

The superb military quality of the French soldier 
never stood out more conspicuously than it did at 
Verdun. For Verdun was a battle of units, of squads, 
of individuals — for inches of ground, scraps of woods, 
footholds on hill-slopes — many times taken and 
retaken. Never before had enormous armies grappled 
so ferociously for weeks and weeks in so restricted 
an area. 

That fact enhanced Verdun's significance. It also 
gave the struggle its surpassing moral value. French 
nerves proved equal to the fiercest strain that could 
be put upon them by the new German tactics of assault, 
based on unprecedented artillery concentration, the 
use of special shock formations, and the lavish employ- 



Verdun 243 

ment of gas waves, flame throwers, and shells charged 
with asphyxiating and tear-producing gases. 

No other German attack on the West Front was as 
sustained and vicious as that at Verdun. When it 
failed France breathed more freely. The indefinable 
prestige of German arms was shaken. Sedan and 
Gravelotte were forgotten. The French knew that, 
so far as their armies were concerned, the German 
onslaught could be stayed. France's future was 
reasonably secured, barring collapse of civiHan morale, 
due to defeatist intrigues or war weariness. 

On the German side Verdun was the completest 
military failure of the war. It had no value except 
as an experiment in attrition. And attrition, pure and 
simple, was a policy which Germany could not afford 
to pursue. The German strategic reserve which was 
used up on the Meuse would have sufficed many times 
over to deal the final blow to Russia. Hindenburg 
saw this clearly and from the beginning he opposed the 
Verdun campaign. His appointment late in the sum- 
mer to succeed Falkenhayn as Chief of Staff was a 
tardy admission by the controlling military clique 
that German strength had been sapped to no 
purpose. 

The strategical conception which underlay the Ver- 
dun operation is still obscure. In October, 1916, 



244 The Strategy of the Great War 

when the Germans still held positions on the right 
bank of the Meuse from which they could look down 
on Verdun, the General Staff, departing from its custom, 
issued a statement intended to convey the idea that 
the purposes which Falkenhayn had in view were in 
a large measure accomplished. But, as will be shown 
later, the purposes were neatly trimmed and localized 
to fit the actual situation. As the main object of this 
publication was to impress the German public, it would 
be foolish to accept its somewhat artful explanations 
at face value. 

While the battle was in progress Allied critics were 
prolific in interpretations of Falkenhayn 's strategy. 
In chapter ii of his book The Assault on Verdun, a 
Spanish writer, Senor E. Diaz-Retg, has summarized 
the Allied views then current. They are in brief: 

1. That Germany turned west in 191 6 because 
the chief object of the Balkan campaign had been 
frustrated by the creation of the Allied entrenched 
camp at Salonica. 

2. That the Germans expected a general Allied 
offensive in France in the spring of 191 6 and wished 
to "get the jump" on the Allies by anticipating it. 

3. That the German General Staff thought a 
victory in the West was desirable in order to stimulate 
war loans and reconcile the German civilian popula- 
tion to the hardships of stricter food rationing. 

4. That possession of Verdun was needed to 



Verdun 245 

protect the Briey iron district, to secure Metz from 
an Allied attack, and to solidify the German positions 
in France. 

5. That the General Staff believed it advisable 
to strengthen the Hohenzollern dynasty by staging 
an offensive in the West in which the Crown Prince 
of Prussia should be the shining figure. 

These reasons are far from convincing. They don't 
even hang together. The last is trivial. The Crown 
Prince of Prussia has testified that the military clique 
at Grand Headquarters was intensely hostile to him. 
It considered him a dangerous liability. Its only 
concern about him was to immure him safely some- 
where behind the lines where he couldn't interfere in 
any way with military operations. He was so immured 
up to the end of the war. There is nothing to show that 
his personal interests or wishes were ever consulted 
in decisions affecting military policy.^ 

Nor was the German General Staff ever guilty of 
the weakness of fitting its strategy to the exigencies 
of domestic politics. It controlled public opinion. 
There was no public opinion in Germany except that 
which it created. The German civilian population 
up to the end of the war never dreamed of questioning 
the infallibility of judgments reached at Grand Head- 
quarters. Public opinion might react to strategy. 
But strategy never reacted to public opinion. 



246 The Strategy of the Great War 

The existence of the Allied intrenched camp at Sa- 
lonica imperilled only in a minute degree the results of 
the Balkan campaign. A Teuton Mittel-Europa had 
been established and was destined to an enormous en- 
largement whenever Germany should resume Eastern 
operations. The Salonica camp was no obstacle to 
the conquest of Rumania in 19 16 or the dismember- 
ment of Russia in 191 8. Through 191 6 and 191 7 it 
was to serve the single purpose of frustrating a Ger- 
man occupation of Greece. Had the German General 
Staff thought it worth while to eject Sarrail's army from 
Macedonia, it could have done so in 191 6, at a cost 
far below that of the futile attempt on Verdun. 

If Germany needed a spectacular victory, why did 
she not seek one at Salonica instead of on the Western 
Front? To transfer her main effort to the West in- 
volved a reversal of the sound and marvellously success- 
ful policy which she had been pursuing since January, 
1 91 5. What was Falkenhayn's ruling motive in re- 
curring to the original Moltke programme of taking 
Paris and crushing France? 

Evidently he must have thought that the best road 
to Paris lay through Verdun. That was the road taken 
by the German armies in 1870. Any considerable 
progress along it would have the result of uncovering 
the French fortified line from Toul down to Belfort. 



Verdun 247 

It would carry the German armies south of the Argonne 
and south of Rheims and compel a more considerable 
readjustment of the Allied front in France than would 
a break-through almost anywhere else between Nieu- 
port and the Swiss border. 

Falkenhayn, in turning west again, was simply 
yielding to the lure of the Moltke tradition — to the 
fixed idea of the Western school of German strategists. 
He was trying to do what the younger Moltke had 
partly succeeded in doing in 19 14, and what Luden- 
dorff partly succeeded in doing in 191 8. But since his 
failure was absolute, the real scope and purposes of 
his strategy could not be avowed. In order to cover 
up his humiliation the theory was put forward that his 
operation at Verdun had only a limited and purely 
defensive character. 

The official German version of Falkenhayn 's strate- 
gical intentions is given in volume xxi of the Kriegs- 
berichte aus dem Grossen Hauptguartier , published in 
1 916. It skilfully adopts and elaborates the fourth of 
the theories in Senor Diaz-Retg's summary. Verdun, 
it says, constituted the north-eastern corner pillar of 
the whole French defensive system. It was also the 
chief French sally-port for an offensive against Middle 
Germany. It was the most dangerous sally-port of 
all, since an offensive out of it would put the French 



248 The Strategy of the Great War 

armies in the rear of the German armies on the Aisne 
and Somme fronts, in Artois and in Belgium. Further- 
more, French possession of Verdun was a standing 
threat to a German utihzation of the rich coal and 
iron ore deposits of the Briey district, which were of 
immense value to the German munitions industry. In 
short, Verdun was, both for offensive and defensive 
purposes, one of the most valuable operation bases in 
French control. 

The inference to be drawn from all this is that Fal- 
kenhayn was conducting a purely defensive operation, 
intended to make the German positions in France 
more secure against an Allied attack. 

The last paragraph of the General Staff's exposition 
reads : 

It had not been possible for us up to the spring 
of 1916 to close this sally-port. War on two fronts 
had kept a substantial portion of our forces in the 
Russian and Balkan theatres. Only when these 
forces had been released could the reduction of 
Verdun be undertaken with this strategic purpose 
in view: first to close the French sally-port, so far 
as Germany was concerned, and then, in the course 
of further operations, to swing the door inward 
toward France. 

In this last phrase only is there any intimation that 
Falkenhayn expected to use Verdun as a base for an 



Verdun 249 

advance on Paris. Yet, if he didn't, why did he con- 
tinue for months his costly effort to destroy the French 
bridgehead east of the Meuse ? It is highly improbable 
that he ever took seriously the various weighty con- 
siderations marshalled in the General Staff bulletin 
to justify his attack as a piece of sound defensive 
strategy. The General Staff itself didn't take them 
seriously, either then or later. 

Verdun was never used as a French sally-port for 
an invasion of German Lorraine. Metz remained 
undisturbed in German possession until the armistice 
was signed. So did the Briey coal and iron fields. It 
was extremely improbable that France would ever 
undertake an offensive from the Meuse, so long as the 
German armies remained on the Aisne, the Oise, and 
the Somme. In Picardy the Germans were only sixty 
miles fromx Paris. In 1915, 1916, and 191 7, the French 
were never strong enough to risk an offensive on the 
Lorraine or Alsace border. It was not until the very 
end of the war, when the American armies had taken 
over the Lorraine front, that Verdun was used as the 
base for an Allied offensive. Had the war lasted 
through November, 191 8, there would have been an 
American-French offensive directed against Metz. 
But before that time the German armies which had 
held the Aisne and Somme fronts and the Hinden- 



250 The Strategy of the Great War 

burg Line would have been well back toward the 
Rhine. 

In fact, German strategy in France, both before and 
after Falkenhayn's offensive, completely ignored the 
threat of Verdun. After Falkenhayn's dismissal, Hin- 
denburg tranquilly went ahead completing the vast 
fortified zone which bears his name. From that zone 
Ludendorff launched the great offensive of 191 8, re- 
gardless of the existence of the Verdun sally-port. He 
could probably have made a successful drive south 
from the Argonne or east from the St. Mihiel salient 
and surrounded Verdun, if he had thought it necessary 
to do so in order to soHdify the German defensive 
position in France. 

But Ludendorff 's strategy was not defensive. Like 
Moltke the Younger, and Falkenhayn, he aimed at a 
military decision in the West. He drove salients in 
Picardy, in Flanders, and in Champagne, deeper than 
those which the Germans held in 191 5. And he lost 
to Foch because he couldn't defend those salients — 
not because his armies were threatened with envelop- 
ment by an Allied offensive based on Verdun. 

Falkenhayn undoubtedly expected to repeat Mac- 
kensen's exploits on the Dunajec. He employed the 
same means and the same tactics. But he met a foe 
vastly better prepared for defence than the Russians 



Verdun 251 

were in 191 5, and far superior in leadership and 
morale. 

All records were broken by the German artillery 
concentration against the arc of the advanced French 
line north of Verdun and east of the Meuse. Macken- 
sen is supposed to have used two thousand guns at the 
Dunajec. Falkenhayn used three thousand at Verdun 
— most of them of the newer and heavier calibres. 

Topographical conditions greatly favoured the artil- 
lery attack. The French positions on the east bank of 
the river curved in a semicircle from Brabant, on the 
north, to the Cotes of the Meuse on the south. The 
northern arc was, therefore, not only subject to direct 
fire, but could be enfiladed along its whole length by 
German batteries near Forges, on the west bank, and 
in Spincourt Wood, to the north-east of Ornes. The 
German fire on February 21st was massed consecu- 
tively on the various segments on the northern eight- 
mile front. Its intensity may be judged from the 
statement of an artillery officer, reported by Sefior Diaz- 
Retg, that eighty thousand projectiles fell in an area 
one thousand metres long by five himdred to six 
hundred wide. 

As at the Dunajec and in the French attack in Cham- 
pagne, the first-line defences were blasted away. Woods 
were razed and the hillsides were ploughed up. Most 



252 The Strategy of the Great War 

of the men in the trenches were either killed, wounded, 
or stunned. 

But the defence didn't melt away. Fortunately 
for the French the advanced lines were lightly manned. 
There were only one hundred thousand French troops 
in the Verdun sector and they were evenly distributed 
over the whole front. As in the East, the German 
shock phalanxes advanced at the end of the bombard- 
ment, expecting to find no organized resistance. They 
took many prisoners. But all along the line French 
units offered fight. They sacrificed themselves in or- 
der to retard the German advance. It took the shock 
infantry four days, from February 2 1st to February 
25th, to reach the main French line of defence on the 
north, from Samogneux to Forts de Douaumont and 
Vaux. 

When the empty shell of Fort de Douaumont was 
taken by the Brandenburg division on February 25th, 
the German High Command thought that Verdun was 
won. But on that day the real French defence of the 
fortress had only begun. 

There is a legend of Verdun, just as there is a legend 
of the Marne. It was widely published and believed 
in 1 91 6 that the French High Command was ready to 
evacuate Verdun and withdraw all the French forces 
to the west bank of the Meuse. The politicians in 



Verdun 253 

Paris, it was whispered, vetoed this retirement on the 
ground that it would have a disastrous moral effect. 
It has been intimated by some mihtary writers that 
preparations for evacuation were actually made prior 
to February 25th. 

But on that day General de Castelnau arrived in 
Verdun. He sent for General Petain to replace General 
Herr, the commandant of the entrenched camp. Later 
General de Langle de Gary, in command of the Meuse 
sector, was superseded. The French General Staff 
took notice of the rumours that an evacuation was at 
one time in contemplation or under way by issuing the 
following statement : 

At no moment of the battle of Verdun did the 
High Command give the order to withdraw the 
French troops on the right bank of the Meuse. On 
the contrary, on the morning of February 23d, General 
de Langle de Gary instructed the troops on the right 
bank that every point, even though enveloped, every 
height, even though completely surrounded, must be 
held at any cost and that there was but one order 
— to resist. On the night of the 24th the commander- 
in-chief issued orders to resist on the whole front 
between the Meuse and the Woevre, using every 
means available. At the same time he sent General 
de Castelnau to Verdun. The next morning, while 
en route. General de Castelnau confirmed by tele- 
phone to General Herr that, in accordance with the 
orders of the general-in-chief, the positions on the 



254 The Strategy of the Great War 

right bank of the Meuse must be held, whatever 
the cost. Finally, on the evening of the 25th, 
the general-in-chief sent to General Petain, on his 
taking command, the following order : 

"I gave instructions yesterday to resist on the 
right bank of the Meuse, north of Verdun. Any 
chief who should give an order to the contrary would 
be summoned before a court-martial!" 

This communication doesn't solve all doubts as to 
the original intentions of Generals Herr and de Langle 
de Gary. But it shows clearly that from February 
25th on the French army was firmly committed to 
that gruelling test of endurance on the heights of the 
Meuse to which Falkenhayn had challenged it. 

The fighting around Verdun divides itself into several 
easily distinguishable phases. The first phase ended 
on February 25th. In the opening five days the Ger- 
mans broke through the northern face of the semi- 
circular bridgehead east of the Meuse, and the French 
troops were drawn in on the eastern and south-eastern 
faces. Three hundred thousand Germans were en- 
gaged against about one hundred thousand French. 
Besides their losses in dead and wounded the French 
lost between ten and twenty thousand prisoners. But 
this was the ordinary cost of holding a line subject to 
"drum fire" bombardment. The Germans had made 
an advance averaging three miles on the whole eastern 



Verdun 255 

front and at Fort de Douaumont they were in sight 
of Verdun. 

Petain's arrival was the signal for a French counter- 
attack. This cleared the hill on which Fort de 
Douaumont stood, leaving a Brandenburg battalion 
marooned in the dismantled work. From February 
26th to February 29th there was continuous fighting 
in the Douaiimont sector. When the German attack 
slackened on March ist, the real crisis of the defence 
was over. 

Petain then had both the men and the guns to hold 
the positions on the east bank of the Meuse. He had 
also developed the method of counter-attack, so costly 
to troops which had already made great sacrifices to 
gain a position which in their weakened condition they 
couldn't hold. He was reducing the battle of Verdun 
to a series of infantry actions in which the better in- 
dividual fighting qualities of the French infantry were 
bound to tell in the long run. And after March ist, 
the French artillery began to measure up to the German 
in calibre and numbers. 

The third phase of the battle was the extension of 
the German attack to the left bank of the Meuse. 
Halted at Douaumont, Falkenhayn decided to try to 
reach Verdun from the west. Tactically an advance 
on the west bank had been made unavoidable by the 



256 The Strategy of the Great War 

fact that the French batteries on that side could 
enfilade the more advanced German line on the east 
side of the river. The left bank operation began on 
March 2d, and lasted until April nth, the centre of the 
attack being shifted gradually farther and farther west. 
The Germans gained ground persistently, but at an 
enormous cost. Near the river they pushed south as 
far as the famous two-crested Dead Man's Hill, whose 
northern crest they captured. But they couldn't get 
possession of the southern crest, or of Hill 304, to the 
west of it, the two keys of the defence on this part of 
the Verdun front. 

In order to facilitate operations against Pepper Ridge, 
on the east bank, Falkenhayn set out to carry Goose 
Ridge, on the west bank. In order to envelop Goose 
Ridge he tried to take Dead Man's Hill. In order to 
envelop Dead Man's Hill he shifted the attack to Hill 
304. Finally, in order to surround Hill 304, he at- 
tempted to smash the French line still farther west, 
between Malancourt and "Avocourt. All these efforts 
broke down with terrific losses. 

Meanwhile on the east bank the Germans made a 
series of desperate assaults on Fort de Vaux, about a 
mile south of Fort de Douaumont. These lasted, with 
intermissions, from March 8th until April ist. They 
were a complete failure. Then, on April i8th, the 



Verdun 257 

third phase of the great battle ended with the repulse 
of an assault on Pepper Hill. The German casual- 
ties now reached a total of about two hundred 
thousand. 

Still Falkenhayn wouldn't admit defeat. The battle 
entered its fourth phase on May 7th. On the west 
bank of the Meuse violent German attacks all along 
the line culminated, on May 29th, in the capture of 
the southern summit of Dead Man's Hill. Then the 
attack shifted to the east bank. After a week of furious 
fighting Fort de Vaux was taken. 

A breach was thus opened in the main French line 
of defence north-east of Verdun. Through it the Ger- 
mans advanced in June against Fort de Souville, two 
miles south-west of Fort de Vaux. They made some 
progress and fighting continued in this sector through 
July. But the British offensive on the Somme now 
absorbed German attention. The assault on Verdun 
flagged and then ended. The May and June attacks 
resulted in at least one hundred thousand additional 
German casualties, bringing the German total to three 
hundred thousand or over. The French losses were 
probably somewhat less. 

Verdun was, however, still closely beleaguered. The 
German General Staff communication of October, 
19 1 6, in which Falkenhayn's strategy was elucidated, 



258 The Strategy of the Great War 

contained this complacent statement of the situation 
on the Meuse: 

What our troops have exhibited in the way of 
buoyant aggressiveness, in a stiff defence of con- 
quered territory, in the cheerful endurance of unheard- 
of hardships and sufferings of every sort, and in an 
undeniable zest for battle, stands out as the highest 
possible example of heroism. The victory which 
they thereby achieved is considerable. We can look 
down on the basin of Verdun, on the city, on the 
Meuse bridges and the railroad lines and are able 
to bring them all under destructive fire. Verdun's 
value as the corner-stone of the defence of the French 
frontier is thus, if not completely destroyed, at least 
greatly diminished. Its usefulness as a bridgehead 
and as an offensive sally-port is absolutely nullified. 

This assurance was premature. Almost simultane- 
ously with its publication General Nivelle, who had 
succeeded Petain, started a counter-attack, which 
broke through the German lines for a two-mile gain 
on a four-mile front. Douaumont Fort and village 
were recaptured. A few days later Vaux Fort and 
village were retaken. 

On December 13th Nivelle was promoted to the 
command of all the French armies in France. His 
successor at Verdun, General Mangin, started another 
counter-offensive on December 15th. This broke the 
German line on a front of six and a quarter miles and 



Verdun 259 

regained all the important strategic positions on the 
east bank of the Meuse. In these two brilliant opera- 
tions the French took about twenty thousand prisoners 
and suffered very slight losses. 

The door for a French invasion of German Lorraine 
was again open. But the French were never to use it. 
This fact could only add to the chagrin of the German 
strategists who, merely in the hope of closing it (if 
their own explanations are to be accepted), had sacri- 
ficed more than three hundred thousand men. 

Among the great struggles of the war Verdun stands 
out by reason of its duration and intensity. It was 
distinctly a soldiers' battle. It heralded in a way the 
recovery by the infantry arm of its once proud distinc- 
tion as "the queen of battles." 

Coming in the mid-period of the warfare of deadlock, 
it disclosed no appreciable disturbance in the equation 
between the offensive and the defensive. The defen- 
sive still retained the upper hand. The lightness with 
which the advanced French lines happened to be held 
on February 21st may have conveyed a hint to the 
observant of the coming change in the tactics of fixed 
positional defence. Also in the continuous resort to 
counter-attack the final answer to the break-through 
after irresistible artillery preparation may have been 
vaguely suggested. 



26o The Strategy of the Great War 

But these were only veiled intimations. The Somme, 
which followed Verdun, was to be fought largely on the 
old lines. The complete rehabilitation of the power 
of the offensive was still a long way off. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE SOMME — ^HINDENBURG's RETREAT 

Consciously or unconsciously, the battle of the 
Somme was the supreme effort of the Allies on the 
Western Front to break away from the sterile poHcy 
of "nibbling." The Somme was not a "bite." Nor 
was it, except in appearance, a grandiose experiment 
in what the French call the "war of usury." It was a 
step — perhaps in the dark, but still an important step — 
toward strategical freedom and the resuscitation of the 
warfare of movement. 

At the Somme the French and British obviously 
aimed at breaking through the German front and com- 
pelling at least a partial German retirement. It was 
their answer to Verdun. But, as was the case with the 
Germans at Verdun, since only local results seemed 
at the time to have been obtained, a disposition mani- 
fested itself, after the operation was over, to qualify 
and minimize its strategical objectives. 

There is this striking difference, however, between 

Verdun and the Somme. The German offensive was 

261 



262 The Strategy of the Great War 

absolutely barren. The local gains on which the 
German General Staff felicitated itself in October, 191 6, 
were wiped out before the end of the year. The Somme 
offensive, on the other hand, did not bear its real fruit 
until 1 91 7. It had the retarded effect of compelling 
Hindenburg's "strategical retirement" out of the 
Noyon salient. 

It is therefore reasonable to assume that the under- 
lying motive of the Somme offensive was always to 
dislocate the German front south of Arras and to un- 
cover from the north the salient, curving south-south- 
east from below the Somme through Chaulnes and 
Roye to Noyon, which constituted the apex of the 
German position in France. In 191 8, Foch broke the 
Montdidier salient, which was only the old Noyon 
salient extended westward, by attacking in the same 
manner and from the same direction. The Allies had 
failed in 191 5 in two ambitious attempts on the flanks 
of the German position — one in the neighbourhood of 
Lens and Arras, the other in eastern Champagne. It 
was logical enough that they should make their next 
attack nearer the centre. 

The battle of the Somme lasted from July ist until 
November i8th. It was the most sanguinary struggle 
of the war. The losses on both sides probably ex- 
ceeded 1 ,200,000. In compaj '. son with this immense 



The Somme— Hindenburg's Retreat 263 

expenditure, the results achieved by the offensive 
seemed inconsiderable. The British never reached 
Bapaume. The French never reached Peronne or 
Chaulnes. The Germans didn't concede defeat. Until 
after the Hindenburg retreat the Allies were hardly 
in a position to claim a victory. 

Perplexity as to the real worth of the offen- 
sive led, for a time, to very cautious valuations of it. 
In his concise and modest report on the Somme 
operations, published on December 29, 1916, Field 
Marshal Sir Douglas Haig said that their object was 
threefold : 

1 . To relieve pressure on Verdun. 

2. To assist our allies in the other theatres of 
war by stopping any further transfer of German 
troops from the Western Front. 

3. To wear down the strength of the forces 
opposed to us. 

This summary waives aside the whole question of 
direct or immediate strategical objectives. The Ger- 
man General Staff claimed nothing but local objectives 
at Verdun. The British commander-in-chief claimed 
nothing but general objectives at the Somme. But in 
neither case are the avowed purposes of the offensive 
reconcilable with its tenacity and magnitude. 

If the Somme is to be judged by attainment or non- 



264 The Strategy of the Great War 

attainment of the three objects specified by Sir Douglas 
Haig, it was much more of a failure than history is 
likely to concede it to be. In the first place, it was not 
necessary to conduct a four and a half months' battle 
in Picardy — beginning July ist — in order to relieve 
German pressure on Verdun. The crisis at Verdun 
had passed long before July i, 191 6, There was a real 
crisis early in February. But none emerged later. 
France had shown that she intended to hold Verdun 
and that she was able to hold it. Joffre was not obliged 
to defend Verdun on the Somme. He would not have 
been likely to involve himself in a large and costly 
offensive for Peronne, if he had any idea that Verdun 
was in danger. No Frenchman would have thought 
of swapping Verdun for Peronne. 

Joffre said to Senor E. Diaz-Retg, the author of The 
Attack on Verdun: "At no time did we believe that 
Verdun would be taken. 

A British offensive at any point of the Western Front 
could not help having the indirect effect of absorbing 
German reserves. But the Russian offensive in Volhynia 
and Bukowina had already begun to absorb them 
before July ist. The Verdun campaign was a closed 
incident, so far as Germany was concerned, before the 
battle of the Somme opened. The threat of a British 
attack on the Picardy front was sufficient to inhibit, 



The Somme— Hindenburg's Retreat 265 

after June ist, the further prosecution of Falkenhayn's 
disastrous venture on the Meuse. 

If a British offensive on the Somme was not needed 
to relieve German pressure on Verdun, it was, on the 
other hand, impotent to relieve German pressure on 
the Eastern Front. After the battle of the Somme 
began BrusilofE's progress toward Lemberg was halted. 
Before the Somme ended Rumania had been crushed. 
With their severed fronts, the Western and Eastern 
Entente Powers were never able to give one another 
any real assistance. Allied offensives in France, in 
191 5, couldn't save Russia or Serbia. They couldn't 
stave off AUied failure in Gallipoli. Similarly, in 1916, 
they were powerless to sustain Russia or to save 
Rumania. 

The only Allied army which could intervene effectively 
in Rumania's behalf was Sarrail's, holding the in- 
trenched camp of Salonica. But this force was too 
weak to do more than make a feeble demonstration 
against Bulgaria, which was to end with a trivial ad- 
vance as far as Monastir. In so far as the Somme was 
intended to demonstrate the efficacy of joint Allied 
action on two isolated fronts against an enemy holding 
interior lines, it was a fiasco. It could not well be 
anything else; for the theory it was demonstrating 
was an illusion. 



266 The Strategy of the Great War 

On the assumption that the French and British 
fought the Somme in order to check Germany's trium- 
phal progress in the East, the Germans were entitled 
to claim a victory. Such an opportunity was not over- 
looked by the German General Staff, when it issued, 
in November, 191 6, its official summary of the Somme 
operations. After commenting sarcastically on the 
singularly restricted strategic aims announced in Paris 
and London it said: 

The second of these modest objectives amounted 
to this : ' 'Can we succeed in tying up so much of the 
enemy's available forces that Germany will be at 
least unable to put sufficient forces at the disposition 
of her south-eastern allies, either to protect them 
against the new Balkan belligerent (Rumania) or to 
help them conquer her?" . . . 

To this question our answer is: "We have held 
our Western Front and nevertheless been able to 
release enough men not only to bring the Russian 
offensive to a standstill, but also to snatch from the 
jaws of the new enemy his stolen plunder and to 
assist the Bulgarians in recovering the lands in the 
Danube Delta of which they were robbed. Already 
the Balkan passes, the gates to the heart of Rumania, 
are in our hands." ... To the Entente's claim of 
strategical success we enter this denial: "A liberated 
Transylvania, a conquered Dobrudja." 

Had the German bulletin writer waited a month 
longer he might have added : ' ' An occupied Bucharest. ' ' 



The Somme— Hindenburg's Retreat 267 

The Somme saw attrition on a stupendous scale. The 
new British armies had their first test. And the test 
was prodigal. The North cried out in horror in 1864 
at the butchery of Cold Harbour. The Somme was 
one Cold Harbour after another. The British loss 
from July to December was approximately 450,000. 
The French loss may have been 250,000. The Germans 
probably lost between 500,000 and 600,000 men, of 
whom more than 65,000 were taken prisoners. 

But on this showing, the Allied policy of wearing 
down the enemy — if it was a deliberate, primary policy 
— hardly justified itself. The attrition theory was one 
of the survivals from the earlier days of the war, when 
Entente paper man-power, based on population, ex- 
ceeded Teuton man-power more than two to one. But 
the Russian collapse had shown that mere numbers 
were not a decisive factor in the military equation. 
After the subsidence of Brusiloff's offensive and the 
conquest of Wallachia, Russian man-power ceased to 
count. The seeds of the revolution had already been 
sown. Russian dissolution was approaching. And 
with Russia practically out of the war, the United 
States showing no signs of entering it, and Japan de- 
clining to send troops to Europe, something like equal- 
ity in numbers seemed about to be restored. 

Looked at from this angle, the Somme was as danger- 



268 The Strategy of the Great War 

ous a drain on Allied fighting strength as it was on 
German. It had suddenly become as important for 
France and Great Britain to husband their man-power 
as it was for Germany. To fight without a clear stra- 
tegical objective, simply for the purpose of "wearing 
down," ceased to be sound policy. And the best results 
in the way of attrition — if attrition was the only aim- — 
were still to be had by fighting on the defensive. 

Some perception of this truth became noticeable in 
the Allied operations on the West Front after 1916. 
There were no more Sommes. Both the British and 
the French (the French especially) began to hmit their 
offensives, wisely awaiting the time when the offensive 
should definitely get the upper hand of the defensive. 
For the Germans the effects of the Verdun lesson lasted 
through 191 7. They adjusted their defensive to the 
new conditions imposed on it by the devastating effect 
of artillery fire on first-line trenches, strongly held, 
and then adhered to it, except in operations like those 
of the Crown Prince of Prussia's armies in the Rheims- 
Soissons sector, which were largely in the nature of 
grand scale counter-attacks. 

The Somme, whatever other strategic purpose may 
be ascribed to it, made the first real breach in the Ger- 
man defensive system in Northern France. The Ger- 
man line ran slightly south-west from Arras down to 



The Somme— Hindenburg's Retreat 269 

Fricourt — a village a couple of miles east of Albert. 
There it turned east at a right angle for about eight 
miles. Then it ran south to the Somme River. Be- 
low the river it bulged out again, passing in front of 
Chaulnes and Roye and curving east near Lassigny 
to form the Noyon sahent. 

The purpose of the Anglo-French attack was to 
drive a deep wedge between the Arras sector and the 
Noyon sector. The British were to advance north 
across the southern face of the right angle, whose apex 
was at Fricourt, meanwhile containing the Germans 
on the western face. Bapaume, nine miles away, was 
the ultimate British objective. The immediate ob- 
jective was an east and west ridge running, roughly, 
from the Tortille River to the Ancre. 

The French were to support the British left and were 
also to move east on a long front toward Peronne, 
five and three quarters miles -away (situated in the 
angle where the course of the Somme changes from 
north to west) , and toward the general line of the Somme 
south of that city. A deep salient was thus to be driven 
with its tip to the north-east of Combles. 

The French made more rapid progress than the 
British. In the fortnight between July ist and July 
15th, they advanced their line south of the Somme to 
a maximum depth of six miles on a ten-and-a-half- 



270 The Strategy of the Great War 

mile front. They reached the western bank of the 
river opposite Peronne. They took 12,250 prisoners. 
The British in the same period advanced their line 
to a maximum depth of three miles on a ten-mile front 
and took 10,000 prisoners. 

The French drive was halted after July 15th by fierce 
German counter-attacks. South of the Somme fight- 
ing died down, although early in September and also 
in October General Joffre made a considerable effort 
to capture Chaulnes, the key to the German positions 
south of Peronne. The French turned their attention 
instead to helping out the British on the northern part 
of the battle front, co-operating in the extension of the 
Allied salient east and north-east of Combles. 

The British reached the southern crests of the cross- 
ridge from the Tortille to the Ancre by July 15th. 
The rest of July was spent in consolidating these posi- 
tions behind the original German first line and beating 
off counter-attacks. There was an interlude in August. 
The heavy guns had to be brought forward for a new 
blasting operation. This began on September 2nd 
and lasted through the month. 

The British attacked with tremendous energy, and 
the chief centres of German resistance on the cross- 
ridge fell one after the other. Guillemont and Ginchy 
were taken on September 3d, Martinpuich and Cour- 



The Somme— Hindenburg's Retreat 271 

celette on September 15th, Les Boeufs and Morval on 
September 25th. Thiepval, on the western end, and 
Combles, on the eastern, still held out. But the French 
had already penetrated east of Combles and now en- 
veloped that town from the south and west. It was 
evacuated on September 26th. On the same day 
Thiepval was stormed by the British, who also pushed 
forward in the centre to Gueudecourt, a mile north 
of the ridge. 

The toll of these operations was ghastly. Divisions 
in the line had to be constantly replaced. The offen- 
sive slowly died down. October was excessively cloudy 
and rainy. The Allied salient was extended north- 
east of Combles when the French captured Sailly and 
Saillisel. The last-named village was lost repeatedly 
and didn't pass permanently into Allied possession 
until late in November. In October the British pushed 
forward their front in the centre as far as Le Sars, 
four miles south-west of Bapaume. In November they 
extended their gains westward by eliminating a small 
German salient west of the Ancre River. The total 
area reconquered was approximately 120 square miles. 

The crisis of the battle of the Somme was reached 
in the last week of September. The British and French 
had concentrated their attack at the point of the 
salient which they were driving past Combles toward 



'212 The Strategy of the Great War 

Bapaume. By a terrific effort they cleared the ridge 
which was the backbone of the second German line 
of defence. But having cleared it they were unable 
to go any farther. The October intermission, which 
followed, marked a virtual abandonment of the Somme 
operation, so far as it had aimed at a large-scale pene- 
tration of the German lines in Picardy. 

The German official report notes, not without justi- 
fication, four different phases in the Allied attack. 
The first, covering July, was an ambitious attempt to 
break through both toward Bapaume and toward 
Peronne. Near the end of July this attempt confined 
itself more and more to a broadening out of the Allied 
salient north of the Somme. In August there was a 
lessened pressure on all parts of the front. The third 
phase came in September with a renewal north of the 
Somme of the breaking-through effort at the point of 
the salient, on both sides of Combles. This brought 
the Allies their maximum tactical success and also 
substantial gains in territory. It ended in temporary 
exhaustion and was never renewed. The fourth phase, 
in October and November, was distinguished by a 
return to broadening-out tactics. It was the beginning 
of the end. 

By October the German situation on the Eastern 
Front had been entirely relieved and ample provision 



The Somme— Hindenburg's Retreat 273 

had been made for the campaign against Rumania, 
Turkish troops had been brought up to GaHcia and 
Bukowina. The drain on German reserves was over. 
Hindenburg, who had succeeded Falkenhayn as the 
German Chief of Staff, was able to send heavy rein- 
forcements to the West and these reinforcements barred 
the way of the AlHes to Bapaume. 

The German report on the Somme, pubHshed early 
in November, 191 6, says: 

The strengthening of the German defence since 
the critical 25th of September has made such pro- 
gress that today we oppose to the enemy a strength 
which offsets his numerical superiority, thanks to 
the better fighting quality of our troops of all 
arms. 

German troops on the Somme front in November, 
191 6, were far from excelling the Allied troops in quality. 
But there was a much nearer approach to equality in 
numbers then than there had been in the summer and 
early fall. 

The Somme was, in the main, a battle of the rigid 
positional type. Yet it represented material progress 
toward open fighting and freedom of movement. The 
area conquered was many times larger than the area 
conquered in the battle of Artois or the battle of Cham- 
pagne. And the real effects of the dislocation of the 



274 The Strategy of the Great War 

German line were to be disclosed four months later 
in the Hindenburg retreat. 

Field Marshal Haig noted in his report that cavalry 
was used in High Wood on July 14th. General Sir 
Henry Rawlinson, commanding the British Fourth 
Army, evidently had a considerable body of cavalry, 
in reserve, for use in case of a break-through. Troops 
fighting on horseback were a piquant reminder of con- 
ditions which trench warfare had threatened to abolish. 

At the Somme, too, tanks were used for the first 
time, co-operating with an infantry assault. This 
happened on September 15th, when early in the morn- 
ing, as the Haig report says, "tanks were seen to be 
entering Flers, followed by large numbers of troops." 

This was an historical occasion; for the tank was 
destined to play a commanding role a little later in 
revolutionizing offensive tactics and readjusting the 
balance between the offensive and the defensive. 

The potentiality of the new weapon was promptly 
indicated, as may be judged from the following passage 
in the British Field Marshal's statement: 

On the same day [September 26th] Gueudecourt 
was carried after the protecting trench to the west 
had been captured in a somewhat interesting fashion. 
In the early morning a "tank" started down the 
portion of the trench held by the enemy, from the 
north-west, firing its machine guns and followed by 



The Somme— Hindenburg's Retreat 275 

bombers. The enemy could not escape, as we held 
the trench at the southern end. At the same time 
an aeroplane flew down the length of the trench, 
also firing a machine gun at the enemy holding it. 
These then waved white handkerchiefs in token of 
surrender, and when this was reported by the aero- 
plane, the infantry accepted the surrender of the 
garrison. By 8.30 a.m. the whole trench had been 
cleared, great numbers of the enemy had been killed, 
and eight officers and 362 of the ranks made prisoners. 
Our total casualties amounted to five. 

The German defence systems in the region between 
the Somme and the Ancre were among the most formid- 
able on the Western Front. They were held strongly, 
in accordance with the defensive theories and methods 
of the earlier phases of trench warfare. But the British 
attack demonstrated that front defensive lines, how- 
ever strong, could be demolished or smothered by artil- 
lery fire. German experience in the trying period from 
July 1st to November ist undoubtedly led to the revi- 
sion of the scheme of defence, which was to be put into 
effect in 191 7. This scheme called for a forezone lightly 
held, with many small centres of resistance, the main 
defence being withdrawn a mile or more to the rear. 
It also required more dependence to be placed on 
counter-attacks, which were, in fact, a characteristic 
of the German defensive on the Somme from September 
on until the end of the battle. This change worked 



276 The Strategy of the Great War 

steadily to lighten the burden of the offensive 
and to increase correspondingly the burden of the 
defensive. 

This radical transformation of German tactics was, 
in fact, disclosed in the supplementary battle of the 
Somme, in February and March, 191 7. Field Marshal 
Haig then shifted his main attack to the Ancre Valley, 
approaching Bapaume from the west. Good progress 
was made during February. On February 25th, when 
the British stormed the German first system of trenches, 
running from north of Gueudecourt to Serre, on the 
west side of the Ancre, they discovered that the enemy 
front line was held only by machine gun squads in 
selected positions, the infantry and artillery having 
retired a considerable distance. By March loth the 
British drew close in on Bapaume from the south and 
west. But 'Hindenburg had already decided to yield 
it without a fight. 

The great German "strategic retirement" of 191 7 
was already under way early in March. But the 
Allies didn't become aware of the movement until 
March 15th. The British entered Bapamne and 
Chaulnes on March 17th and Peronne on March i8th. 
The German armies had razed clean the zone from 
which they were withdrawing and pursuit was difficult 
and ineffective. The area evacuated covered over one 



The Somme— Hindenburg's Retreat 277 

thousand square miles and before the war had contained 
a population of about two hundred thousand. 

Hindenburg withdrew, generally speaking, out of the 
great Noyon salient, established in the fall of 19 14, 
after the Battle of the Aisne. The rim of the salient 
ran originally from the heights north of Soissons north- 
west through Noyon to Roye, and thence north past 
Chaulnes to Albert and Arras. It was called the Noyon 
salient because Noyon was situated near its apex and 
was the point in it nearest to Paris. 

But at the time of the retreat this larger salient had 
been broken into two smaller salients, as a result of the 
Allied operations on the Somme. A blunt wedge had 
been driven into the German positions, the tip of it 
due east of Albert and due north of Peronne. The 
northern German segment had assumed the form of an 
isosceles triangle, with the apex at Arras. The western 
side and the southern base were both under strong 
pressure from the British, who, if they took Bapaume, 
would be in a position also to envelop the triangle from 
the east. 

The German positions, west of the Arras-Bapaume 
highroad, had, in fact, become valueless for armies 
standing on the defence. 

South of the Somme the situation was a little less 
precarious. But if Peronne should be lost and with it 



21^ The Strategy of the Great War 

control of the river between Peronne and Nesle, the 
whole Noyon front could be outflanked and rolled up. 

Hindenburg therefore made a virtue of an obvious 
necessity. His retirement was not voluntary, except 
in the sense that he was wise enough to anticipate 
the disastrous effects of a renewal of the battle of the 
Somme. By withdrawing unmolested and with a great 
parade of strategical prevision and mechanical pre- 
cision of execution, he gave his operation an appearance 
of self-determination. The Germans boasted of the 
retreat, with its barbarous devastation of the territory 
surrendered, as a prudent extrication. They refused 
to see that it involved a concession that the direct 
strategical object of the Allied offensive on the Somme 
had been attained — something which the Allied com- 
manders had been chary about asserting and which 
the German General Staff had vehemently denied. 

The maximum German retirement was about twenty- 
five miles, from Chaulnes and Roye to a line running 
between St. Quentin and La Fere. Above Peronne 
it averaged about ten miles. On the south the new 
system joined up with the old one along the Ailette 
River, near Coucy. It ran north to La Fere, on the 
Gise, and up the Oise Valley to Moy. Thence it turned 
north-west to St. Quentin, which remained nearly 
encircled by the French. Thence it ran in front of 



The Somme — Hindenburg's Retreat 279 

Le Catelet, passed Cambrai, four or five miles to the 
west, and ended at Arras. It was modified in the spring 
of 191 7, after the battle of Arras, when the Germans 
fell back to the Siegfried line, running north from 
Queant to the neighbourhood of Lens. Except for 
this recession the great barrier stood unbroken until 
the fall of 1918. 

In the broad strategic sense Hindenburg's retirement 
marked the final step toward that change in German 
military policy which he had long had at heart. He had 
won his fame on the East Front. He had been the 
chief builder of Mittel-Europa. Now he wanted to 
consolidate Germany's enormous gains in Russia and 
the Balkans, where the cost of conquest was light, while 
tiring out France and Great Britain by a cautious 
defensive in the West. That was the true German 
policy, from which Verdun was a flagrant departure. 

At the time Hindenburg was withdrawing to what 
he considered an invulnerable defence line in France 
the Russian revolution had arrived. As a military 
power Russia was to die slowly. But she was certain 
to die. Then Germany would have troops enough to 
carry the war to a draw in the West— which for her 
would mean victory. 

The Hindenburg line was intended as a symbol of 
the permanency of the German occupation of Northern 



28o The Strategy of the Great War 

France. It was not meant to be a threat to Paris, 
nor a "jumping off" point for another expedition below 
the Marne. Ludendorff used it as such in 1918. But 
he was then demonstrating his own strategy, not Hin- 
denburg's. The great barricade which the latter 
erected defied French and British assaults all through 
191 7. It would probably have defied them through 
19 1 8 and 1919, if madness at Berlin had not driven 
America into the war. 

But even before Hindenburg had settled down in his 
vast system of field fortifications, his strategical scheme 
was ^\Tecked by Germany's decision to summon an- 
other and more powerful enemy into the arena, to 
take Russia's place. His own power as Chief of Staff 
had passed to Ludendorff, who was willing to tie up 
Germany's fortunes with the insane project of unre- 
stricted submarine warfare. 



CHAPTER XV 

RUSSIA'S COLLAPSE — RUMANIA 

The collapse of Russian military power dates from 
the great retreat of 191 5. The defeats of that year 
sealed the fate of the old order. And Russian military 
power — such as it was — was bound up with a continu- 
ance of the old order. 

Neither the government nor the people realized 
clearly what was happening. The revolutionary pro- 
cess was hidden and for that reason all the swifter and 
more fatal. For a time, in fact, both the government 
and the people reacted vigorously to the Teuton inva- 
sion. The Czar took direct command of the armies. 
Among the military leaders there was no thought of 
quitting. In their opinion, the disasters of 191 5 could 
easily be repaired. The Western Allies and the United 
States would supply guns and munitions and Russian 
man power was practically inexhaustible. 

The machinery of internal administration had broken 
down to a considerable extent. It was supplemented 
by the activities of the Zemstvos and other public bodies, 

281 



282 The Strategy of the Great War 

which took charge of sick and wounded soldiers and 
refugees and also helped to supply the armies with 
food and clothing. In 191 6 the war had become more 
nationalized and popularized than ever before. But 
with the unloosening of individual and community 
energies, the foundations of the Romanoff autocracy 
were sapped. 

The political complications which led up to the de- 
thronement of the Czar are still obscure. General 
Basil Gourko, who as acting Chief of Staff was thrown 
into close relations with Nicholas II from November 
23, 1 91 6, to March 7, 191 7, describes him as a reason- 
able and conscientious commander-in-chief, loyal to the 
Entente and thoroughly interested in the prosecution 
of the war. He readily accepted military advice. But 
General Gourko notes that this amenability did not ex- 
tend to questions of internal administration and politics. 

The reason for this is plain, as Gourko indirectly 
admits. In the latter field Nicholas was not his own 
master. He was under the influence of the Czarina 
who, in turn, was controlled by reactionary politicians 
and mystic adventurers like the monk Rasputin. 
Sturmer and Protopopoff were the Czarina's proteges. 
Apparently they maintained themselves in power by 
playing on her morbid solicitude for her son's succession 
and the future of the dynasty. 



Russia's Collapse — Rumania 283 

In an autocracy, war is a dangerous experiment. 
It shows too clearly the dependence of the government 
on the people. It could not but have the effect in 
Russia of accelerating the desire of all classes for a 
larger measure of political freedom. Roda-Roda, the 
Viennese litterateur and war correspondent, wrote in 
1914 a story of the experiences of an Austrian Ukranian 
who was taken prisoner by the Russians. The Ukra- 
nian reported an intelligent young Cossack officer as 
saying: "The revolution will come, whether Russia 
wins or loses." It was a true prophecy; for it repre- 
sented an instinct deep in the mind of the Russian 
people. 

In 1916, hopes of a revolution centred more and more 
in the Duma. The Duma, therefore, became the 
bugbear of the reactionary politicians who had the 
ear of the imperial family. Protopopoff calmly un- 
folded to Gourko, early in 19 17, his plan for suppressing 
the Duma. But earlier than that the Czarina's ad- 
visers had evidently turned toward the idea of a peace 
with Germany as the best means of preserving the 
imperial prerogatives. Sturmer's policy was pacifistic 
in tendency and effect. And the Russian people had 
come by 191 7 to distrust the Protopopoff clique not 
only as enemies of the liberal movement but also as 
friends of Germany. 



284 The Strategy of the Great War 

Political conditions were, therefore, shaping them- 
selves all through 1916 for the revolution, which came 
in March, 191 7 — apparently like a bolt out of a blue 
sky. Military operations in 191 6 were not directly 
affected by the political manoeuvres at Petrograd, 
except in so far as some of the Czarina's extreme fol- 
lowers may have established secret communications 
with Berlin. The armies continued to fight. But, 
like the people, they had lost their sense of personal 
loyalty to the Romanoffs and when the revolution came 
they accepted it with indifference. 

So far as the Russian High Command was concerned 
it showed no chagrin at the failure of the Western 
Allies to come effectively to Russia's aid. The Rus- 
sians had made many sacrifices for the sake of influ- 
encing the strategic situation in the West. They had 
invaded East Prussia in August, 19 14, in order to re- 
lieve German pressure on France. By their victories 
in Galicia, they had compelled Germany to turn east 
in 1915. But France and Great Britain had accom- 
plished very little in return that year, when the German 
armies were driving the Russians out of Galicia, Poland, 
Lithuania, and Courland. 

Russia was to play the same generous role in 19 16. 
In order to prevent German reinforcements flowing 
west to the Verdun front Kuropatkin undertook a pre- 



Russia's Collapse— Rumania 285 

mature and barren winter offensive in the Dvina sector. 
Later, when the Austro-Hungarian drive down the 
Adige Valley into Northern Italy got under way, 
Brusiloff's offensive in Volhynia was hurried up. It 
had an immediate effect. For the Austrian command 
had to break off the ItaHan offensive and shift troops 
east, in order to check Brusiloff's sensational advance. 
Russia again did her part as a faithful ally of the West- 
em Powers. But the result was that she exhausted 
her strength before Rumania entered the war and could 
not make good on her earlier promise to guarantee 
the Rumanian conquest of Transylvania. 

Russia began the year 191 6 with an offensive against 
Czemowitz, the capital of Bukowina. It lasted three 
weeks, cost sixty thousand casualties, and got nowhere. 
The Dvina offensive followed in March. It lasted two 
weeks and cost more than one hundred thousand casu- 
alties. Again the strategical results were nil. Russian 
man-power could not offset German superiority in ar- 
tillery and in the mechanical equipment for defensive 
trench warfare. 

To get better results Russia had to turn south and 
strike at "the secondary enemy," Austria-Hungary. 
Brusiloff's great offensive of June-August, 1916, was a 
repetition on a broader scale of the successful Russian 
offensive of August-September, 19 14. The Austro- 



286 The Strategy of the Great War 

Hungarians were again caught napping. They were 
decidedly inferior in numbers, and in artillery, having 
transferred many divisions and heavy guns to the 
Trentino. With a lavish use of munitions and of men 
the Russians crashed through the Austro-Hungarian 
lines in Volhynia, Galicia, and Bukowina to a depth of 
from twenty to fifty miles. Once more they reached 
the eastern slopes of the Carpathians. 

Brusiloff's drive had been prepared for by an accu- 
mulation of guns and shells, furnished largely by Great 
Britain, France, and Japan. The best Russian troops 
had been massed in the south, under the command of 
the most energetic field generals, including Letchitsky, 
Scherbatchev, Sakharov, and Kaledin. The drive was 
originally intended to coincide with Rumania's entry 
into the war, and to support her invasion of Transyl- 
vania. But as has been said, Italian necessities ad- 
vanced its date. In one sense this was fortunate; 
for it found Austria-Hungary with her hands tied in 
the East. 

The battle was fought on a front of 250 miles — in 
strange contrast with the restricted, intensive struggle 
which was just dying away at Verdun. It began on 
June 4th. The greatest initial progress was made in 
the sector about Rovno, the eastern extremity of the fa- 
mous triangle of Volhynian fortresses — Rovno, Dubno, 



Russia's Collapse— Rumania 287 

Lutsk. Lutsk, at the other end of the base from Rovno, 
and Dubno, at the southern apex, had fallen into the 
hands of the enemy at the end of the Teuton drive of 
191 5. These three fortresses had been built to protect 
Kiev from an Austro-Hungarian irruption out of north- 
eastern Galicia. 

Moving west from its base at Rovno, General Kale- 
din's army encountered two divisions of Czecho-Slovaks 
or South Slavs, which cheerfully surrendered. A gap 
was thus opened, through which the Russian cavalry 
and infantry poured. By June 6th they had entered 
Lutsk. On June loth Dubno, enveloped from the 
north, was evacuated. By June 23d Kaledin's forces 
were about twenty-five miles west of Lutsk, where the 
advance was suspended, awaiting developments farther 
north and south. To the south Sakharov was held up 
near Tarnopol for a time. But on his left, Scherbatchev 
captured Buczacz. Letchitsky, farther down, reached 
Czernowitz on June 21st. 

On the northern battle front Kovel now became the 
chief Russian objective. It was an important railroad 
junction and Hindenburg was determined to hold it 
at any cost. On July 4th a new Russian army, under 
General Lesh, advanced west along the Kovel-Kiev 
railroad and in three days reached the Stokhod River, 
twenty miles east of Kovel. Here the German defence 



288 The Strategy of the Great War 

tightened up, and although Lesh, supported by Kaledin, 
delivered many assaults and actually passed the river 
at two places, the German line held without much 
difficult3\ In fact, wherever German troops stood, or 
furnished a considerable stiffening, Brusiloff's drive 
made no material progress. 

The Russian offensive had completely relieved Italy. 
Its other purpose, from the point of view of general 
Allied strategy, was to link up the Russian front with the 
Rumanian. Success on the southern front therefore 
counted more than success on the northern front. After 
the fall of Czemowitz, Letchitsky-'s armies overran Bu- 
kowina. Cossack cavalry reached Kimpolung, on the 
Rumanian border, on June 23d, and then pushed west 
as far as the Carpathian passes into Transylvania. 

Unfortunately Rimiania was not yet ready to declare 
war. So Letchitsky turned north into Galicia, aiming 
at the Jablonitsa pass into Hungary. He took Kolo- 
mea and Delat^^l and seized the northern approaches 
to the pass. After a month's rest he renewed the 
offensive into Galicia. In conjunction wdth Scher- 
batchev he captured Stanislau on August loth, and 
this operation compelled the Bavarian army, holding 
the sector to the north, to draw back toward Lemberg. 
But by the end of August the Bnisiloff offensive 
was over. 



Russia's Collapse— Rumania 289 

It had had an amazing success — at least on the sur- 
face. Seven thousand square miles of territory were 
recovered. About 350,000 prisoners had been taken, 
nearly all of them Austro-Hungarians, perhaps 50,000 
of them Slavs and Transylvanian Rumanians, who 
had voluntarily given themselves up. More than four 
hundred guns were captured. 

It was Russia's greatest military effort — and practi- 
cally her last. The offensive was pushed fairly close 
to the stage of exhaustion. The munitions which had 
been accumulated had been shot away. The armies 
had suffered tremendous losses — probably equalling, if 
not exceeding, those of the enemy, which may have 
totalled six hundred thousand. And there were 
political reasons for halting the attack — the d3mastic 
reasons which now shaped the policy of Stiirmer, Pro- 
topopoff and the poHticians who had the ear of the 
Czarina. 

General Gourko speaks guardedly of the causes of 
the stoppage of the great summer offensive. He says: 

Of course, in our advance we took into account the 
great size of our living forces and utilized them to 
counterbalance our shortage in material resources. 
The event showed that such a calculation had no 
sufficient foundation. However excellent the living 
force was, however high its warlike spirit, neverthe- 
less there existed a limit. One cannot, under such 



290 The Strategy of the Great War 

conditions, utilize living strength against dead mate- 
rials. Moreover, in course of time, as the operations 
draw out, the stock of moral force wears out, while 
the flow of material force, at any rate with our ene- 
mies, remains at the same level. 

This is a clear acknowledgment of the fundamental 
handicap under which Russia laboured in a war in 
which she was cut off from the support of her Western 
Allies. Gourko continues: 

In this way the advance of Brusiloff's troops nearly 
ceased about the end of August. The reason lay, 
not so much in the shortage of reserves — because 
these reserves were sufficient to fill a part of the new 
Austro-Rumanian front — as in that misfortune which 
followed us from the very outset of the campaign, 
shortage in ammunition for the artillery, and 
particularly for the heavy guns. 

Nevertheless the weariness of the troops had its 
effect to a certain extent. But there can be no 
question that the stoppage of the advance was pre- 
mature and founded on orders from Headquarters, 
under a pretext which cpuld not be openly spoken 
about, whereas amongst our Allies, if not in the press, 
such reasons were publicly mentioned or whispered. 

Brusiloff's offensive was an impressive experiment 
in attrition. It weakened Austria-Hungary. But it had 
no permanent beneficial effects in the way of reliev- 
ing the strategical situation. The relief to Italy was 
incidental. And the fact that Russia had exhausted 



Russia's Collapse— Rumania 291 

herself by the end of August left the Allies not only 
powerless to reap any advantage from Rumania's long 
delayed entry into the war, but also condemned them 
to stand by helplessly and see Rumania sacrificed, 
as Serbia and Montenegro had been sacrificed the year 
before. Once more in the Balkans Allied diplomacy 
and strategy were to show themselves blind and halt. 
Lack of Allied unity of command never produced more 
calamitous consequences than those which flowed 
from the bungling of the Gallipoli and Rumanian cam- 
paigns. Had there been an Allied generalissimo in 
191 6, with the vision and confidence of Marshal Foch, 
Russia might have been saved from dissolution, the 
Balkans cleared and Constantinople isolated or cap- 
tured. Here were the elements in the situation. There 
was an Allied army, with an estimated strength of 
more than four hundred thousand, in the entrenched 
camp at Salonica. Half of Greece had broken away 
from Constantine's rule. There was a provisional pro- 
Ally Greek government at Salonica under Venizelos. 
The Allied fleet dominated Athens. Constantine could 
have been dethroned and expelled in 191 6, as easily 
as he was in 191 7. Greece would then have entered 
the war and Sarrail's energies would not have been 
paralyzed by the constant threat of an attack from the 
rear. 



292 The Strategy of the Great War 

Rumania had an army of six hundred thousand men, 
at least twice the strength of the Bulgarian army. If 
the Russian offensive had been held up, as originally 
planned, until Rumania was ready to strike, and had 
been conducted in close co-operation with Rumania 
(Italy attacking at the same time on the Isonzo and 
the French and British on the Somme), Bulgaria could 
probably have been overwhelmed in September, 191 6, 
the Central Powers separated from Turkey and a free 
passageway opened into Russia across Bulgarian 
territory, from the ^gean to the Black Sea. 

Having control of the Black Sea and the Danube, 
Russia could easily have sent south in the fall of 191 6 
some of the armies, whose strength was wasted earlier, 
striving for purely local results on the Volhytiian front. 
From Russia's own point-of-view her man-power could 
be put to far better use in the' Balkans than along 
the Russian battle line. No objective which she could 
reasonably hope to reach in the North would bring 
her any nearer to a junction with her Western Allies, 
on whom her salvation in the way of adequate supplies 
of war material depended. But in the Balkans she 
would be moving steadily toward contact witn the 
army of Sarrail. 

Did the Allies ever entertain this larger conception 
of a union of the Russo-Rumanian and Macedonian 



Russia's Collapse — Rumania 293 

fronts? The German General Staff publications re- 
peatedly credited them with such a plan. But it was 
never avowed by the Allies themselves and practically 
nothing was ever done to carry it through. The Allied 
diplomats concluded the agreement with Rumania. 
It bears the traces of their workmanship; for in it 
strategic aims are subordinated to political ones. The 
skin of the bear was divided with great precision. 
But no provision was made for slaying the bear. 

There was an alternative strategical plan — the inva- 
sion of Transylvania — and that was chosen probably 
because it harmonized with Rumania's territorial 
aspirations. Under her agreement with the Allies 
she was to have Transylvania and the greater part of 
Banat of Temesvar — two non-Hungarian portions of 
the kingdom of Hungary. Her natural preoccupa- 
tion was to get military possession of them at once. 
As soon as war was declared — on August 28, 1916, — she 
pushed her forces through the Moldavian and Walla- 
chian passes into Transylvania and also sent an expedi- 
tion past the Iron Gates of the Danube into the Banat. 

Russia was to co-operate in the invasion of Transyl- 
vania. But to do so the Russians had first to force 
the strongly held passes of the Eastern Carpathians. 
This her armies, in their weakened condition at the 
end of August, were never able to do. 



294 The Strategy of the Great War 

After the Rumanian debacle, brought on in large 
part by the collapse of the Rumanian-Russian defence 
in the Dobrudja, it became the fashion to criticize 
Rumania for having pushed recklessly across the Tran- 
sylvanian border in defiance of Allied advice. Such 
criticism was made in ignorance of the terms of the 
secret treaty between Rumania and the Entente, which 
didn't see the light of day until after the armistice was 
signed. 

The military annex to this treaty pledged Rimiania 
to an offensive against Austria-Hungary. Article IX 
of this convention says: "The principal object of 
Rumanian action will be in the direction of Budapest 
through Transylvania." Russian assistance was pro- 
vided for in this stipulation of Article II : "The Russian 
army will aid by vigorous action, notably in Bukowina." 
Russia also promised to send into the Dobrudja two 
divisions of infantry and one division of cavalry, to 
co-operate with the Rumanian army against the Bul- 
garians. These were sent, but they proved lamentably 
inadequate to stop Mackensen's unexpected whirlwind 
offensive. 

The Allies thought that they had sufficiently guaran- 
teed the safety of Rumania's southern border by pro- 
mising an offensive out of the Salonica intrenched camp. 
By the terms of the treaty it was to begin on August 



Russia's Collapse--Rumania 295 

20th, eight days before the Rumanian declaration of 
war. This promise was fulfilled only to the extent of 
an announcement by the French War Office on August 
2 1 St to the effect that "on August 20th the Allied forces 
at Salonica took the offensive on the entire front." 

What really happened was that the Bulgarians, 
evidently forewarned, themselves began an attack on 
the Salonica front on August i8th. They gained 
considerable ground. On Sarrail's extreme right they 
took the Greek port of Kavala, occupied by troops 
loyal to the Greek Government, with which Bulgaria 
was not at war. By collusion with Constantine these 
troops were sent to Germany as nominal prisoners. It 
was not until September i8th that the Sarrail offensive 
— such as it was — got started. By November 19th the 
Allied left wing had reached Monastir, just across 
the Serbian border. But less than three weeks later 
Mackensen was in Bucharest. 

True to its old faihngs, Allied strategy clung to the 
theory of loosely co-ordinated attacks on various fronts. 
German strategy adhered to the principle of seeking a 
decision through envelopment on a single front. Pit- 
ting the first method against the second, the outcome 
could never be in doubt. 

In the first week of September the Rumanians poured 
through all the Transylvanian passes, moving west out 



296 The Strategy of the Great War 

of Moldavia and north out of Wallachia. The Teuton 
forces drew back, vdth the purpose of organizing a 
counter-offensive. Within a fortnight about a quarter 
of the area of Transylvania had been "redeemed." 
In the south-eastern angle of the province the Ruma- 
nians had penetrated to a depth of fifty miles. 

But the farther west and north they moved the 
farther they got awa}^ from the Russians and from 
Sarrail. And while the Russians and Sarrail were 
still inactive the Teuton armies struck at the isolated 
Rimianians from three directions. 

The Rimianian campaign was Germany's most 
finished military achievement. It far outclassed the 
Serbian campaign of 191 5, for Serbia was vastly out- 
numbered, lacked big guns, was beyond any Allied 
assistance, and never had a fighting chance. The 
Rumanians were hardly inferior in numbers and the 
Russians stood only a few marches away. Rumania's 
do\\Tifall was due simply to a brilliant economy of 
force on Germany's part and a lamentably ineffective 
emplo\Tnent of it on the part of the Allies. 

The chief credit for the Rumanian envelopment 
goes to Mackensen. He was in command in Bulgaria. 
He boldly stripped the Macedonian front, ignoring the 
threat of an Allied offensive up the Vardar. Gather- 
ing together some German, Bulgarian, and Turkish 



Russia's Collapse — Rumania 297 

divisions, he invaded the Dobi*udja early in September. 
In a week his right wing had reached the Black Sea 
coast south of Constanza, his centre had stormed 
Silistria and his left wing taken Turtukai. The fall of 
these two last fortresses left Rumania with no bridge- 
heads on the Danube south and south-east of Bucharest. 

Mackensen's objective was the railroad from Bucha- 
rest to Constanza, crossing the Danube at Chema- 
voda. If this were cut, the Dobrudja would be lost 
to Rumania. On October 21st the Rumanian and Rus- 
sian forces covering the railroad line were defeated 
and both Chernavoda and Constanza had to be evacu- 
ated. General Sakharov was sent down to reorgan- 
ize the Allied armies in the northern neck of the 
Dobrudja. But he eventually retreated across the 
Danube into Moldavia. 

The whole southern frontier of Rumania was now 
uncovered. Falkenhayn began on September 19th to 
clear the northern border. He enveloped and com- 
pletely routed the Rumanians at Hermannstadt, in 
Transylvania, north of the Red Tower Pass. Then 
he trapped another Rumanian army near Cronstadt. 
Coming south through the Red Tower Pass Falken- 
hayn cut the railroad from the Iron Gates to Craiova 
and isolated the Rumanian forces in Western Rumania. 
Avarescu, the Rumanian commander-in-chief, tried to 



298 The Strategy of the Great War 

make a stand on the line of the Alt River. But he 
was immediately outflanked on the north by German 
troops pushing through the Torzburg Pass and on the 
south by a force which Mackensen sent across the 
Danube toward Alexandria. 

The situation in Wallachia now became hopeless. 
There was no way to save Bucharest from the German 
armies converging toward it from the north, west, and 
south. A fortress as strong as Antwerp, it was wisely 
abandoned by the retreating Rumanians, without a 
fight. It would have been the grave of an army 
attempting to defend it. 

Mackensen entered the Rumanian capital on Decem- 
ber 6th — 105 days after Rumania had declared war 
on Austria-Hungary. But he didn't tarry long. The 
pursuit of the Rumanians, reinforced by some Russian 
infantry and cavalry, continued until the end of De- 
cember. All Wallachia was cleared. The remnants of 
the Rumanian armies were grouped on a line extend- 
ing east and west from Braila, on the Danube, to 
Fokshani, near the junction of the south-western 
Carpathians with the Transylvanian Alps. Though 
both Braila and Fokshani were taken a little later by 
the Germans, this line remained practically intact 
all through 191 7 and up to the signing of the Treaty 
of Bucharest. 



Russia's Collapse— Rumania 299 

Mackensen had won a series of sensational victories 
at a very slight cost. He had reduced the length of 
the German-Bulgarian front in the Balkans from nine 
hundred miles to about two hundred. He had opened 
many new lines of communication with Constanti- 
nople and added a new principality of more than 
thirty thousand square miles to German Middle 
Europe. Most important of all, he had annexed a 
kingdom almost as valuable as Hungary as a producer 
of foodstuffs. 

It cannot detract from Mackensen 's achievement 
that Allied generalship — or lack of it — played gener- 
ously into his hand. He banked on the paralyzing 
effects of Allied disunity of command. Bub he seized 
his opportunities unerringly and exploited them to 
the full. 

Rumania's fate was pitiful. She had a right to 
think that she had been ruthlessly sacrificed to the 
self-deceptions of Allied policy. About the time that 
Chernavoda fell, Premier Lloyd George was saying in 
the British House of Commons: "We and our Allies 
are working in concert and everything that is possible 
is being done to help Rumania." 

What bitter irony! Allied statesmen in the West 
were still victims of the obsession that they could save 
Rumania by an offensive on the Somme. ' ' Ever3rthing 



300 The Strategy of the Great War 

that is possible! " With Constantine still on the throne 
and Sarrail still fighting inside Greek territory! 

Many Western Allied writers have tried to shoulder 
on Russia the blame for Rumania's downfall. Russian 
military aid to Rumania was certainly disproportionate 
to Russian man power. But that was not altogether 
Russia's fault. She had yielded to the urgings of Italy, 
France, and Great Britain when she advanced the date 
of her great summer offensive. 

Stiirmer and Protopopoff are accused of having 
forced Rumania into the war at an inopportune mo- 
ment and then deserting her. These two reactionaries 
were intriguing for peace at any price with Germany. 
But Russia alone could not compel Rumania to draw 
the sword. Great Britain, France, and Italy, all signed 
the treaty of alliance. It was the business of the Allied 
Military Council to know whether the plan of strategy 
recommended to Rumania was sound or not, and 
whether the promises of co-operation held out were 
genuine and redeemable. 

Russia actually gave Rumania much more assistance 
than the international compact required her to give. 
France, Great Britain, and Italy, the three chief contri- 
butors to the Salonica army, gave no assistance which 
was not a mockery. If the Allied Council knew that 
Sarrail would not or could not break through the 



Russia's Collapse— Rumania 301 

southern Bulgarian barrier, it would have been only 
fair-dealing on its part to insist on Rumania's prolong- 
ing her neutrality. 

The Western Allies failed entirely to grasp the situa- 
tion created by the sacrifice of Rumania. Their states- 
men and generals were living in a world of unreality. 
What had happened on the East Front in 191 5 and 
1 91 6, was still a riddle to them. They still exaggerated 
Russia's strength and underestimated the strength of 
the Teutonic Powers. 

An Inter-Allied conference was held at Petrograd 
at the end of January, 191 7. There was a strate- 
gic commission and a political commission. General 
Gourko, who presided at the strategic meetings, tells 
how he endeavoured to get permission for Premier 
Bratiano of Rumania to attend the political confer- 
ences. Bratiano was finally invited to one meeting. 
The representatives of the major Western Powers de- 
clined to give him a general invitation on the ground 
that it would create a precedent, compeUing the next 
Inter- Ally conference to receive a representative from 
Belgium, from Portugal, and from Serbia, as well as 
from Rumania. As if it was not also Serbia's, Rumania's, 
and Belgium's war ! 

The strategic commission had a harmonious and 
successful meeting. Plans for 191 7 were drawn up 



302 The Strategy of the Great War 

and the military representatives of the Western Powers 
started home, without the least suspicion that what the 
Russian General Staff promised would never be ful- 
filled by the Russian armies and the Russian people. 
Only three or four weeks after the Inter-Allied confer- 
ence adjourned, the Czar was deposed and Russia was 
in revolution. The fiction of a military alliance with 
the Western Entente nations was to be maintained 
for some months to come. But the Russian military 
structure had lost its corner-stone. And the political 
necessities of the Revolution were to turn Russia 
quickly from a friend to a critic of Allied policy — from 
a militant to a "peace-at-any-price" nation. 

Stiirmer and Protopopoff would have made peace 
with Germany on Germany's terms for the sake of 
saving the Romanoff dynasty. After destrojdng the 
army, the Revolutionary leaders discovered that they 
had to go to Germany hat in hand in order to save 
the Revolution. 

Germany didn't directly foment the Duma revolt. 
She would have preferred to do business with the 
monarchy. But when conditions had become ripe 
for the Czar's dethronement, Russia's days as an 
Entente belligerent were numbered. Civil war had 
finished the work of Hindenburg and Mackensen. 



CHAPTER XVI 

GERMANY CHALLENGES AMERICA 

The crisis of the war was reached in the winter months 
of 191 7, when the German Government suddenly 
decided to resume unrestricted submarine warfare. 
This decision was made over the head of the Chancel- 
lor and the German Foreign Office. It ran counter to 
the military policy which Hindenburg had been pur- 
suing. It represented a return to the fatal obsessions 
of Tirpitz. 

The Germans had nearly won the war. Rumania 
had succumbed. Russia was about to yield. Ger- 
many had become master of Central and Eastern 
Europe. But at the moment when prudence counselled 
her to secure the fruits of her Eastern conquests, she 
turned again to the West to seek new quarrels and new 
enemies. Germany had everything to gain and nothing 
to lose by continuing to consoHdate her Continental 
position. She had Httle to gain and everything to 
lose by venturing on a campaign of piracy on the high 

seas. 

303 



304 The Strategy of the Great War 

Of what avail was it to put the Russian colossus out 
of the war and then drag in the United States, an op- 
ponent ten times more dangerous than Russia? But 
Germany, in January, 191 7, was in a mood to defy 
prudence and scoff at reason. In that mood she was 
willing to sacrifice the substance of victory on the 
continent of Europe to the shadowy dream of an 
empire beyond the seas. 

The history of the crisis is still obscure. Hinden- 
burg's appointment in the summer of 1916 to succeed 
Falkenhayn had seemed to put the "Easterners" in 
control of the situation. 

Hindenburg looked with distrust on the U-boat 
venture. Bethmann-Hollweg was anxious to keep 
U-boat activities within the scope of maritime law. 
All through 1916, Germany had shown an inclination 
to regard the so-called submarine blockade of French 
and British ports as a relative failure — a failure to 
such an extent, at least, that it was not worth while 
risking war with the United States for the sake of 
continuing it. 

In the Sussex note of April 10, 1916, and the addi- 
tional note of May 8, 19 16, Jagow, the German Secre- 
tary of State for Foreign Affairs, gave the United 
States assurances that "merchant vessels, both within 
and without the area declared as naval war zones, 



Germany Challenges America 305 

shall not be sunk without warning and without saving 
human lives, unless those ships attempt to escape or 
offer resistance." 

Jagow expressly reserved the right to withdraw 
these assurances, if American diplomatic pressure did 
not move Great Britain to modify the rigours of the 
German food blockade. But it was reasonable to infer 
from the tone of the note, that the German Govern- 
ment was not binding itself to go back presently to 
the old methods as a matter of international punctilio. 
The United States, at least, accepted the view that 
Germany would not resume indiscriminate submarine 
warfare unless she found paying military reasons for 
doing so. 

The period of truce definitely inaugurated by the 
Sussex note, continued all through the year. Verdun 
and the Somme had sobered the Teuton extremists. 
But the glittering Rumanian triumph of October and 
November went to Germany's head. Here was an- 
other supposed proof of Teuton invincibility. A new 
enemy had appeared and had been swiftly vanquished. 
Should the fear of attracting still another enemy now 
deter Germany from revenging herself on Great Britain 
for the discomforts and annoyances of food rationing? 

Even before the war Germany had had her school 
of Easterners and her school of Westerners. The 



3o6 The Strategy of the Great War 

former held that Russia was the real rival to be put 
out of the way and that the objective of Germany's 
next military venture must be the Russian border 
provinces. The latter, composed chiefly of the naval 
clique, the mercantile classes, and the manufacturing 
magnates of the Rhineland and Westphalia, held, on 
the contrary, that as the result of the next war, Belgium 
and the French mineral and manufacturing districts 
must be acquired and Great Britain forced to admit 
Germany to partnership as mistress of the seas. 

These last-named powerful interests now clamoured 
for new offensives in France and an extension of sub- 
marine warfare. They had been kept under in 1916. 
But they had stimulated the building of new and 
larger U-boats. And when German self-esteem was 
suddenly inflated by Mackensen's startling victories on 
the Danube, they found it comparatively easy to get 
a hearing once more in the highest military councils. 

The winter of 191 7 also marked the rising of Luden- 
dorif's star. He had been known in inner military 
and political circles as the real creator of Hindenburg's 
reputation. He had stood in the shadow for two years 
and a half. Now he began to emerge and demand 
consideration on his owji account. Ludendorff's as- 
sumption of power coincided with the change in policy, 
which brought Germany into conflict with the United 



Germany Challenges America 307 

States. It is difficult, therefore, to escape the conclu- 
sion that he associated himself deliberately with the 
elements which demanded war to the knife against 
Allied and neutral shipping, however this relapse into 
barbarism might affect American relations. 

Ludendorff served the ends of the U-boat extremists 
and they served his. He became a political and mili- 
tary dictator and remained such through 191 7 and 
1 9 1 8 . He made and unmade chancellors and ministries. 
As Chief Quartermaster-General, he assumed control 
of industries, transportation, and rationing. He abso- 
lutely controlled the press. His word was law on all 
questions of domestic politics. His power altogether 
eclipsed the Kaiser's. Germany obeyed him implicitly 
and the ruin of her hopes can be laid at no other man's 
door. 

After the war Ludendorff himself attributed German 
defeat in part to the poor work of the Intelligence 
Bureau of the War Office. The Intelligence Bureau 
probably followed the established German custom of 
telling the government and the High Command what 
it thought they wanted to hear. But its poor work 
could not excuse a decision which, it was plain, would 
leave America no alternative but war. Whatever 
reports came from German agents in the United States, 
it ought to have been manifest to any competent states- 



3o8 The Strategy of the Great War 

man or General Staff officer in Berlin that Germany- 
must choose between living up to the Sussex note 
guarantees, or fighting the United States. 

Germany had long presumed on the disinclination 
of the American Government to abandon a sheltered 
and profitable role of neutrality. The Lusitania nego- 
tiations had unavoidably created the impression in 
Europe that the United States would go to very great 
lengths, in order to keep out of the conflict. 

The note of February lo, 1915, in response to the 
German "war zone" proclamation, was a brusque 
affirmation of normal American policy. It gave notice 
that the government at Washington would hold Ger- 
many to "strict accountability" for the destruction of 
an American vessel or the lives of American citizens. 
It announced that the United States would take any 
steps necessary "to safeguard American lives and 
property and to secure to American citizens the full 
enjoyment of their acknowledged rights on the high 
seas." 

This note was apparently written in the lively con- 
fidence that Germany, in her own interest, would avoid 
murdering American citizens travelling on Allied or 
neutral merchant ships. The Lusitania tragedy dis- 
pelled that hope. And when the American Govern- 
ment not only failed to hold Germany to "strict 



Germany Challenges America 309 

accountability" for the massacre of American passen- 
gers on the Lusitania, but also declined to make the 
military preparations necessary to enforce the policy 
outlined in the note of February loth, Germany may 
naturally have jumped to the conclusion that the 
United States was much more concerned about pre- 
serving her own neutrality than she was about main- 
taining neutral rights at sea. 

Superficially, at least, this conclusion may have been 
justified by the correspondence in the Lusitania case. 
In that the contentions of the note of February loth 
were never satisfied. But it became more and more 
difficult to waive satisfaction of them in later cases. 
Many powerful elements in the United States never 
concurred in the Government's solicitous pro-peace 
views. And their protests began to modify the 
Administration's attitude. 

While the Lusitania negotiations were still in progress 
the White Star liner Arabic was torpedoed off the Irish 
coast and two American passengers were lost. In order 
to allay American irritation and also to strengthen its 
own arguments in the Lusitania controversy (for the 
Arabic was west bound and could not be carrying 
munitions or other contraband), Germany now recog- 
nized the advisability of seeking a modus vivendi. On 
September ist Count Bernstorff delivered his famous 



310 The Strategy of the Great War 

memorandum to the American State Department. 
One paragraph of it read: 

Liners will not be sunk by our submarines without 
warning and without safety of the lives of non- 
combatants, provided that the liners do not try to 
escape or offer resistance. 

The use of the word "liners" showed that the guar- 
antee was limited to one class of merchant vessels. 
But the German memorandum involved a partial re- 
cognition of American claims. This recognition may 
have been little more than a temporizing makeshift' 
on Germany's part. Between August, 1915, when the 
Arabic was destroyed, and March 24, 1916, when the 
passenger steamer Sussex was torpedoed in the English 
Channel, there were various instances of illegal sub- 
marine attack. Yet German diplomacy was growing 
more and more cautious. The much stiffer tone of 
the American protest in the Sussex case and the 
increasing agitation in the United States for military 
preparedness led Berlin to admit having violated 
its earlier assurances and even to enlarge the Arabic 
pledge so as to include merchant shipping of every 
description. 

The American Government had threatened to break 
off diplomatic relations unless Germany abandoned 
her illegal methods of submarine warfare. Berlin had 



Germany Challenges America 311 

yielded to that threat. So, on the face of the record, 
Germany could not hope, in 1917, to draw new "war 
zones" about Great Britain, Ireland, France, and Italy, 
and sink on sight enemy or neutral shipping entering 
them, without adding the United States to her already 
long list of enemies. 

What induced Germany — beyond mere mass hysteria 
— to brave war with the United States by unleashing 
the submarine? A ruthless U-boat campaign un- 
doubtedly appealed to the politicians and the public 
as a short-cut to peace. But the military leaders were 
obliged to give at least casual consideration to the 
question whether it would not prove instead a short- 
cut to defeat. 

Assuming that the decision was primarily a military 
one, there is only one rational explanation of it. That 
is that the German General Staff absolutely discounted 
American military power. Its technical experts as- 
sured the German public again and again that America 
could n'ot raise and train armies, within two years, 
and that even if she did raise and train them within 
that time, she could never get them across the Atlantic. 
Had these two assumptions held good, the German 
High Command could eventually have justified its 
challenge to the United States. For America would 
have entered the war only on the economic side, and 



312 The Strategy of the Great War 

she was already to a large extent an Allied munitions 
maker and money lender. 

But the German military leaders didn't realize, in 
making the momentous decision of January, 191 7, 
that they were basing their strategy not on experience 
but on hypothesis. They were banking on the favour- 
able operation of circumstances largely beyond their 
control. Whether America would turn out one, two, 
or four million well-trained troops was a matter for 
her alone to decide. She could do it, if she wanted 
to do it. Whether she could deliver one, two, or four 
million troops in France was a matter for her and her 
European Allies to determine. It was only a question 
of getting the tonnage. Germany's sole power to in- 
tervene lay in the U-boat, whose capacity to "block- 
ade" the French and British coasts and to drive enemy 
and neutral shipping out of the North Atlantic 
lanes had not yet been demonstrated, or even more 
than casually indicated. From the German point of 
view war with the United States was to figure as a 
minor incident of the great U-boat campaign. But, 
as "it turned out, the great U-boat campaign really 
figured as a minor incident in the war with the United 
States. 

The new German submarine raiders lived up to 
expectations for about six months. They showed an 



Germany Challenges America 313 

alarming ability to destroy enemy and neutral shipping 
faster than it could be replaced by new construction. 
But the peak of destructiveness was reached much 
too soon. Before the bulk of the American Expedi- 
tionary Army was ready to be dispatched across the 
Atlantic, the submarine was, in a military sense, a 
confessed failure. German U-boats could not stop 
American transports. Nor, after October, 191 7, was 
there any prospect of their reducing Allied and neutral 
cargo-carrier tonnage below the safety point. 

Against these trivial credits must be set the enor- 
mous debits of the U-boat campaign. The accession 
of the United States to the Entente many times over- 
balanced the retirement of Russia. It allayed all the 
financial worries of the Allied governments. It greatly 
restored French morale in the critical year 191 7. It 
presented a clear guarantee of victory to the Allies, 
if they could only hold out until 1919. Even in 19 18, 
America furnished Foch with the "strategic reserve" 
which enabled him to start his "Victory Offensive." 
She supplied him with the six hundred thousand men 
who cleared the west bank of the Meuse from Verdun 
to Sedan and cut the communications between Luden- 
dorff's southern and the northern army groups. "The 
Americans can never arrive," said the complacent 
War Lords and Intelligence Bureau experts in Berlin. 



314 The Strategy of the Great War 

By the time Germany was ready to solicit an armistice 
the American forces in France actually outnumbered 
the British forces there. 

Look also at the situation which would have de- 
veloped had Germany had intelligence enough to hold 
the activities of her U-boats within legal bounds. 
The new "blockade zone" proclamation was issued 
on January 31, 191 7. Diplomatic relations with the 
tjnited States were broken off on February 3d. The 
United States declared war on April 6th. But already 
in March the Czar had been dethroned and Russia had 
practically ceased to function as a belligerent. After 
March, 191 7, Germany had only to await the psychologi- 
cal moment for appropriating the lion's share of the 
Romanoff inheritance. 

Russia's withdrawal from the war after the Czar's 
downfall was inevitable, and was speedily indicated. 
The Revolution was, on the surface, the work of the 
politicians of the Duma. Yet the Duma was, in reality, 
politically weaker than the Czar was. It represented 
the masses less than he did. It never obtained the 
support of the army. Instead, the army and the work- 
men began organizing a system of committee govern- 
ment of their own, to whose multifarious whims the 
Duma and the provisional government, which it had 
set up, became slavishly subject. 



Germany Challenges America 315 

The first urge of the new freedom was toward de- 
mobiHzation and peace. Both the original Duma and 
the modified Kerensky governments yielded more or 
less consciously to that urge by pleading for a restate- 
ment of the Entente's war aims. Kerensky, as a 
socialist of the international school, felt compelled to 
advocate indirect negotiations with Germany through 
the medium of international socialist conferences of 
the pacifist and pro-German kind so frequently called 
to meet in Stockholm. Thus he quickly brought Revo- 
lutionary Russia into conflict with the war policies 
of Great Britain, France, and Italy. He renounced 
Russian claims on Constantinople, and publicly em- 
braced the principle of "no annexations and no 
indemnities." 

Kerensky was nationalistic and anti-German, how- 
ever. And, unlike Lenine and Trotzky, he was un- 
purchasable. He favoured a continuance of the war 
for the purpose of recovering the Russian territory still 
in the hands of the Germans. But he didn't understand 
making war. His schemes for democratizing the army 
quickly destroyed its discipline and fighting power. 

Kerensky approved the spasmodic Komiloff offen- 
sive of July, 191 7, and even went to the front to 
harangue the troops selected to take part in it. The 
Russian army was better munitioned in the summer of 



3i6 The Strategy of the Great War 

191 7 than it had been at any time since August, 1914. 
Korniloff had some success at first on the Galician 
front, where he had only second and third class Austro- 
Hungarian troops to deal with. But his attack had 
hardly got under way before it collapsed. Several 
Russian divisions mutinied and retreated. German 
reinforcements arrived, restored the Austro-Hungarian 
lines, and then drove the demoralized Russians out of 
Galicia and Bukowina. 

By August I, 191 7, the Russian armies had practi- 
cally ceased to exist as armies. They were only mobs in 
uniform awaiting the signal to demobilize. Hundreds 
of thousands of soldiers deserted, finding the process 
of demobilization too slow for them. There was no sec- 
tor of the whole front which the Germans and Austro- 
Hungarians could not now penetrate at will. The 
Germans had been unable to take Riga in 1915 or in 
1916. But in September, 191 7, it fell to them at a 
trifling cost. General Letchitsky could make only a 
nominal defence. The German fleet then lent a hand 
in capturing the islands in the Gulf of Riga, thus open- 
ing the way to Reval. Had the German High Com- 
mand wanted to do so, it could easily have taken Reval 
and Petrograd in the fall of 191 7. It could have gone 
to Moscow, too, if it hadn't preferred to turn west and 
overwhelm the Italians at Caporetto, 



Germany Challenges America 317 

From March, 191 7, on, Germany was free to impose 
her will on Russia. It was only a question of time and 
method. If Ludendorff had not mortgaged the future 
by challenging the United States, he would have had 
an indefinite period — two years, three years, or until 
the end of the war — in which to organize the military 
resources of Russia against the Entente. Napoleon 
turned Poland into a recruiting camp. Why should 
Germany not have tried to exploit in like manner the 
man power of Poland, Finland, the Baltic Provinces, 
Lithuania, and the Ukraine? 

But America's entry into the war materially short- 
ened Germany's period of grace in the East. The 
Muscovite oyster had to be opened and eaten quickly. 
Freedom of action in Russia was guaranteed through 
191 7; for Ludendorff knew that he could easily hold 
the French and British with the forces he had on 
the Western Front. Freedom of action might also be 
guaranteed for a part of 1918. But beyond that 
point nothing was clear. 

Two ways of approach to the Eastern problem were 
open to Germany. The first was to attack in force in 
the summer and fall of 191 7 and extort a peace from a 
Russian Government still partly bourgeois in character, 
fearful of the revolutionary terrorists, and glad to 
sustain itself through a German alliance. This course 



31 8 The Strategy of the Great War 

would have involved military intervention on behalf 
of Kerensky against the Bolshevists or on behalf of 
Korniloff against Kerensky. It would have duplicated 
Gennany's policy in Finland in supporting Manner- 
heim against the Reds. Possibly it would have in- 
volved a little greater military effort. But the results 
would have been worth while; for Germany would 
have won that same credit in Russia generally as she 
won in Finland as the deliverer of the non-proletarian 
element from the tyranny of a proletariat dictatorship. 
A German protectorate might have been accepted 
with a certain measure of gratitude because of its 
political and economic benefits. 

The alternative course was to stand off and let the 
poison of the Revolution do its work. This policy, 
which Ludendorff adopted, allowed him to denude the 
Eastern Front. But it wasted precious time. Ger- 
many undoubtedly accelerated the Bolshevist counter- 
revolution. Lenine and Trotzky may or may not 
have been on the German payroll. Their personal 
interests coincided with Germany's interests. They 
were willing to pay almost any price for the opportu- 
nity to try out their theory of Ghengis Khanism, dis- 
guised as Marxian justice — of military terrorism 
camouflaged as socialistic democracy. 

Sitting tight on the East Front for a year, while 



Germany Challenges America 319 

fomenting the Bolshevist infection, would have brought 
Germany no ill results, if America had not been all 
the while preparing. Even before the treaties of Brest- 
Litovsk and Bucharest had been signed, American 
reinforcements were arriving in France. Germany 
had thus lost twelve golden months, if her military 
leaders ever had it in their minds to fill up their wan- 
ing divisions with Poles, Lithuanians, Finns, Ests, 
and Ukrainians, just as Napoleon the First filled up 
his with Italians, Spaniards, Netherlanders, Poles, 
Westphalians, Saxons, Rhinelanders, and South 
Germans. 

Ludendorff thought it cheaper to use chicanery in 
dealing with Revolutionary Russia than to use force. 
In order to encourage the anti-Ally revolutionary 
leaders and to tempt the Petrograd government and 
the peoples of the border provinces into seeking peace, 
the German Reichstag had passed, on July 19, 191 7, 
a hypocritical resolution, declaring its opposition to 
any "forced annexations" of territory. This was a 
crafty echo of the Kerensky programme of "no annexa- 
tions and no indemnities." When Germany and 
Austria-Hungary finally got ready to meet Russia 
at the peace table, they sought to attract representa- 
tives of the other Allied Powers to Brest-Litovsk by 
announcing, through Count Czernin, that they actu- 



320 The Strategy of the Great War 

ally favoured "no annexations and no indemnities" 
and also the right of "self-determination for subject 
peoples." 

Lenine and Trotzky probably knew how worthless 
these protestations were. The Russian border peoples 
had no means of knowing. When, therefore, General 
Hoffmann brutally raised the German mask at the peace 
conference, these peoples realized that they had been 
made the victims of German perfidy. Expecting 
national independence, they were put off with the barest 
and emptiest symbols of it. They accepted the Teuton 
yoke, cynically camouflaged as "self-determination." 
There was nothing else for them to do. But they 
accepted it — all of them but Finland — with sullen 
disappointment. 

The Germans did Finland a real service by crushing 
the Bolshevist Finnish army and restoring order. Had 
America been kept out of the war, Finnish divisions 
would eventually have fought in Ludendorff 's western 
armies. So might Lithuanian, Baltic Province, Pol- 
ish, and Ukrainian divisions, if Ludendorff had only 
torn up the fatal war zone Admiralty proclamation of 
January 31, 191 7. 

In fact, there is little reason to doubt that Germany 
would have made her Western Front impregnable, 
through eastern help, if she had only had the sagacity, 



Germany Challenges America 321 

after once deciding to drop illegitimate U-boat activi- 
ties, to stick to that decision to the end. 

As it was, her strategy on both fronts in 191 7 was 
hampered by an uneasy consciousness that the U-boat 
had failed or was about to fail. She didn't strike 
resolutely against Russia. Nor did she venture to 
transfer her eastern divisions west for the purpose of 
striking resolutely against Great Britain and France. 
The forces which were used by Hutier in September and 
October to take Riga — a perfectly superfluous effort 
at that date — could at least have been employed more 
profitably to break the lines of the Salonica entrenched 
camp, thus loosening the last foothold of the Allies 
on the Balkan Peninsula. Obviously the blow which 
the Italian armies could not parry on the Isonso, 
could not have been parried by the much weaker 
Allied armies in Macedonia. 

The Hindenburg strategical retirement out of the 
Noyon salient had been planned before the U-boat 
decision was made. It was about the last flash of real 
military inspiration at German Grand Headquarters. 
After that comes the long Ludendorff regime of inde- 
cision and bluster, of vacillation here and reckless 
plunges there, of the generalship of the gambling table. 

According to the calculations of the men who ordered 
the resumption of indiscriminate submarine warfare, 



322 The Strategy of the Great War 

America would never fight in France. According to Gen- 
eral Hoffmann, the dictator at Brest-Litovsk, Luden- 
dorff telephoned him, in February, 1918, to "sign a 
peace — any peace — with any Russian who can write 
his name." Hoffmann quotes Ludendorff as adding: 
"The Americans are coming, and we need every corps 
we have on the Western Front. Make peace with 
Russia and release our armies there at once." 

In February, 191 8, there were no first-class, and 
comparatively few second class, German troops left 
on the Eastern Front. But what is to be thought of 
a strategy which did not appreciate until February, 
1918, the importance of the time relation between 
peace in Russia and the arrival of the American rein- 
forcement in France and was astonished to discover 
that the latter was appearing too soon and the former 
had come too late? 

Germany's challenge to the United States in January, 
191 7, remains, from the military point of view, the 
most inexplicable mystery of the war. It was not war. 
It was madness. It eclipsed the first Napoleon's mad- 
nesses — the march to Moscow or the harebrained effort 
to seat Joseph on the throne of Spain. It was worthy 
of a poseur strategist, like William II. It was one of 
those caprices of judgment of which destiny loves to 
make men and nations the sport. The U-boat pro- 



Germany Challenges America 323 

clamation was the death warrant of Teutonism. It 
ended the German dream of world empire. No Ger- 
man is ever likely to admit direct responsibility for it. 
His own people would stone him. But civilization 
would owe him a monument. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE WEST FRONT IN I917 — CAMBRAI 

Military operations slowed down considerably in 
1 91 7. The year 191 6 had seen Verdun, the Somme, 
the Brusiloff offensive, and the conquest of Rumania. 
The Teuton allies attempted only one major offen- 
sive in 191 7 — that against Italy. On the West Front 
the French and British confined themselves, in the 
main, to carefully localized attacks. Allenby captured 
Jerusalem near the close of the year. 

The reason for this comparative relaxation of activi- 
ties has already been indicated. The year 191 7 was a 
period of readjustment. The entry of America into 
the war had affected both AlHed and German mili- 
tary policy. Germany had her eyes on the sea, 
watching nervously for the accomplishment of the 
miracle promised by the partisans of unrestricted U-boat 
warfare. The French and the British in the West, 
particularly the French, wisely economized their strength 
while awaiting the coming of the American reinforce- 
ment. Up to 1917, it was to Germany's interest to 

324 



The West Front in 1917— Cambrai 325 

fight a delaying battle in the West. Now delay served 
the purposes of the Allies. 

German policy fell between two stools. The logical 
accompaniment of the renewal of submarine piracy 
would have been a speeding-up of the attack — first 
on the East Front and then on the West Front. But 
Germany unwisely delayed forcing a peace on Russia. 
Hindenburg's plans for a permanent defensive in the 
West had only matured in the winter and spring of 
191 7. It was difficult to change them. The colossal 
Hindenburg Line had been constructed as a barrier 
which could be easily and economically held. Even 
after the U-boat's inability to stop the flow of American 
troops to Europe had become patent, Germany still 
required months to shift in the West from a defensive 
basis to an offensive basis. Ludendorff was, in fact, 
unable to organize his attack on the French and British 
until March, 191 8. The best he could do in the fall of 
191 7 was to go south and deal a staggering blow to 
Italy. 

The first British operation in the West was the battle 
of Arras. This was in purpose and method a continua- 
tion of the battle of the Somme. It was a military 
success only in so far as it compelled an extension to 
the north of the retirement which Hindenburg had 
already effected out of the Noyon salient. 



326 The Strategy of the Great War 

The German withdrawal had not affected the front 
from Arras to Lens. The new enemy line joined the 
old one at a point just below Arras. The result of two 
months of fighting was to push the Germans back 
about five miles east of Arras and to put Lens into a 
dangerous pocket. The British won some valuable 
positions. But in the main the operation was only 
another experiment in attrition. 

The battle began on Easter Monday, April 9th. On 
that day Canadian troops took Vimy Ridge — one of 
the chief objectives of the battle of Artois, fought two 
years before. On succeeding days the British pene- 
trated the entire original German defence system be- 
tween Arras and Lens and forced the enemy as far east 
as the so-called Oppy switch line, an alternative system, 
cutting north from the Hindenburg line in the neigh- 
bourhood of Croisilles. Still farther back was a third 
system, leaving the Hindenburg Line at Queant and 
terminating at Drocourt. 

In the first week of the battle the British had been 
uniformly successful. They had captured about fifteen 
thousand prisoners and two hundred guns. The power 
of the offensive to break through the fore zone of the 
modified German defence system was clearly established. 
But a new obstacle was now encountered. That was 
the counter-attack after the break-through. From 



The West Front in 1917— Cambrai 327 

April 23d to the beginning of June the British armies 
struggled in vain to make any substantial impression 
on the Oppy switch line, because every slight advance 
was met with a German counter-attack. Thus the 
old trench deadlock was perpetuated in a new form. 
It was Verdun over again. Farms, villages, clumps of 
woods, or hill slopes were taken and retaken many 
times. It was a grinding process, as exhausting for 
the defensive as for the offensive. That is the most 
that can be said of the bloody struggles east and south- 
east of Arras. They served no broad, strategic purpose 
and Sir Douglas Haig finally broke them off, shifting 
his attack north to Flanders. 

One lasting result had been achieved, however. 
Possession of Vimy Ridge made the Allied front in the 
Arras-Lens sector secure. When the great German 
irruption came in the spring of 191 8, it overflowed all 
the territory to the south of Arras, which had been 
yielded to the Allies in the Somme fighting and through 
Hindenburg's retirement. It spread, north of Lens, far 
up the Lys Valley toward Hazebrouck. But it beat 
harmlessly against the Lens-Arras barrier. And so 
long as this held Ludendorff lacked the "elbow room" 
to develop his attack down the Somme toward Amiens 
or up the Lys Valley toward Calais. 

From June to December British effort in the West 



328 The Strategy of the Great War 

was concentrated on the front about Ypres. The 
length and persistence of this offensive suggested a 
real strategical objective. It may have been the hope 
of the British High Command to reach Roulers and 
Lille and to compel the Germans to abandon the Bel- 
gian North Sea coast, with the submarine bases of 
Bruges, Ostend, and Zeebrugge. A similar operation, 
in the fall of 191 8, quickly attained all these objectives. 
But the German defence in 191 7 was as adequate in 
Flanders as it was in x'Vrtois or on the Aisne. It could 
not prevent local Allied gains. But it could keep them 
within almost negligible limits. 

The first British exploit was the capture of Messines 
Ridge, south-east of Ypres. The British had held on 
to Ypres since 1914, although it lay on low ground, 
commanded by the German batteries on the heights 
surrounding the city to the north-east, east, and south- 
east. As it stood in 191 7, the Ypres salient was almost 
impossible to defend against a serious German attack. 
It was desirable to enlarge and strengthen it, apart 
from any designs on Lille or the Belgian coast. The 
Messines operation began and ended the same day — 
June 7th. It was executed with remarkable precision. 
The ridge was taken at slight cost, the number of prison- 
ers captured — seven thousand — almost equalling the 
total British casualties. Messines, although an isolated 



The West Front in 191 7 — Cambrai 329 

and minor engagement, demonstrated more strikingly 
than ever the growing power, freedom, and economic 
value of the offensive. 

Encouraged by their easy success at Messines the 
Allies undertook a series of similar attacks in Flanders, 
which lasted from July 31st until the winter rains set 
in. These operations gradually cleared the heights 
east of Ypres and recovered the ground north of the 
city which was lost in the German "gas" attack, of 
April, 19 15. They carried the eastern bulge of the 
Ypres sahent beyond the Messines and Passchendaele 
ridges, bringing Menin and Roulers under AlHed 
artillery fire. 

But in any wide strategic view these results were 
nearly valueless. The railroad artery from Menin to 
Roulers and thence north to the Belgian 6Bi§t district, 
was not cut. Nor did the ridges won serve, like Vimy 
Ridge, as a bulwark against a new German irruption. 
In the spring of 191 8 the Messines heights were stormed 
by the Germans early in the course of the Lys Valley 
offensive. The Passchendaele heights had to be evacu- 
ated without a battle. The sweeping eastern curve of 
the salient became a straight line, skirting the eastern 
edge of Ypres. Ypres itself was only saved by Amim's 
severe defeat on April 29, 1918, south-west of the city. 

In the Flanders battles the German open defence had 



330 The Strategy of the Great War 

one of its severest tests. The "pill box" fore zone 
seldom held the Allied attack. But it wasn't intended 
to do that. The Allies got through the front line with 
great regularity. But they never passed the mid 
zone. They never accomplished anything like a real 
break-through. The best evidence of this is the fact 
that after three months of hard pounding the Germans 
had been thrown back only three or four miles on an 
average and still barred the way to Roulers and Lille. 
In Flanders, as on the Arras front, the war remained 
essentially a war of attrition and deadlock. 

The French began an offensive on the Aisne front a 
week after the British opened the battle of Arras. 
The attack was made over exceedingly difficult ground. 
The battle line ran from a point north of Soissons to 
a point north of Rheims — a stretch of twenty-five 
miles. The objective of the French was the Chemin 
des Dames — the famous road constructed by Louis XV, 
which crowns the commanding east and west ridge 
separating the Aisne Valley from the Ailette Valley. 

The French also scored marked initial successes. 
In three days — from April i6th to April 19th — they 
took seventeen thousand prisoners and seventy-five 
guns. The German first line was broken through 
without difficulty. Hindenburg retorted with violent 
counter-attacks. By May the French offensive had 



The West Front in 1917— Cambrai 331 

been worn down. Craonne, at the eastern end of the 
Chemin des Dames, had been reached. The ap- 
proaches to the western end, east of Vauxaillon, had 
also been seized. 

But the Aisne operation had been exceedingly costly. 
The troops engaged in it thought that there had been 
insufficient artillery preparation. There were rumours 
of a serious impairment of morale. In the fall of 191 6 
General Nivelle had replaced Joffre as Commander-in- 
Chief of the French armies. The battle of the Aisne 
had been fought under his direction. It had hardly 
ended before he was removed. Petain replaced him 
as Commander-in-Chief and Foch was made Chief- of- 
Staff. 

These changes had an immediate effect on French 
military policy. France had borne an enormous bur- 
den in 19 1 6. The Somme had followed Verdun and 
the losses in those two campaigns probably ran well 
over five hundred thousand. The French, with their 
highly organized military machine and their limited 
resources, never relished a mere war of attrition. And 
already in May, 191 7, Petain and Foch saw that much 
better use could be made of the armies France had in 
the field than to exhaust them in premature and usuri- 
ous offensives. The man power of the United States 
would be available within sixteen or eighteen months. 



332 The Strategy of the Great War 

And with that reinforcement the Allies would be in a 
position to try for something more worth while than 
a decision through mutual exhaustion. 

The French armies needed a rest in 191 7. In that 
year also civilian morale was undermined by weak- 
nesses in governmental policy and a widespread cam- 
paign of defeatism. The Bolo Pasha, Humbert, Bonnet 
Rouge, Malvy, and Caillaux disclosures were soon to 
uncover the extent of the insidious anti-war and pro- 
German propaganda. Factionalism had again become 
pronounced in the Chamber of Deputies. The Briand 
government fell in March, 191 7. The Ribot govern- 
ment, which succeeded, was upset in September. Then 
came the Painleve government, which lasted until 
November. Only when Clemenceau came into power 
with his programme of "I make war" and his pledges 
to prosecute defeatists, no matter how powerful their 
political connections, was France again able to emerge 
from the shadow of pacifistic war weariness. 

It was Petain's task, in 191 7, to build up the French 
armies, restore their spirit and confidence and fit them 
for the great role they were to play in 1918. He did 
this by a wise economy in offensive operations and a 
skilful and sparing defence, when attacked. 

Hindenburg was unwilling to give up the Chemin 
des Dames. The Crown Prince of Prussia, who had 



The West Front in 1917— Cambrai 333 

nominal command in this sector, spent most of the 
summer trying to loosen the grip of the French on the 
two ends of this famous highroad. He lost about one 
hundred thousand men in these fruitless attempts. 
Petain bided his time. In October, after the German 
assaults had died down, he executed one of the most 
brilliant local operations of the war. Striking on a six- 
mile front, north-east of Soissons, he quickly penetrated 
the German line to the depth of a mile and half. The 
co-operation between the artillery, the tanks, the air- 
planes, and the infantry was admirable. Twelve 
thousand prisoners and two hundred guns were captured. 

The German hold on the Chemin des Dames now 
became precarious. On November ist the Crown 
Prince abandoned the entire ridge and withdrew to 
positions behind the Ailette River. These positions 
were held by the Germans until Ludendorff's drive for 
the Mame opened in May, 1918. But in the interval 
the mode of warfare on the Western Front had been 
revolutionized. Petain advanced one mile and a half 
and was content to stop. The first day of the drive 
in May, 19 18, saw the Germans at the Aisne; the 
second saw them at the Vesle. In five days they had 
pushed almost to Chateau-Thierry. 

In October, 191 7, such an advance would have 
seemed to be absolutely prohibited by the narrow limi- 



334 The Strategy of the Great War 

tations of rigid positional warfare. But even before 
the year 191 7 ended, there was a startling demonstra- 
tion of the fact that the era of those limitations was 
passing. The battle of Cambrai, fought in November, 
marked the sudden transition from positional fighting 
to open or semi-open fighting. It was, therefore, one 
of the turning points of the war. For if open fighting 
was to succeed trench fighting, so-called, the whole 
strategic problem on the West Front would be altered. 
The deadlock of 1915, 1916, and 1917, would be broken. 
The war would cease to wear the monotonous aspect 
of a mere process of usury. Strategy in the broad sense 
would again come into play and a decision, obtained 
by military insight and the superior handling of armies, 
could not be long postponed. 

Cambrai caught everybody more or less off guard. 
It was a bold experiment, reflecting great credit on the 
British High Command. But its success so far sur- 
passed expectations that no adequate preparations 
had been made to follow it up. After dreaming for 
three years of a real "break-through" the Allies all at 
once found themselves with a "break-through" on 
their hands. They hardly knew what to do with it. 
Before they were ready to exploit it the door of oppor- 
tunity was rudely closed. 

The city of Cambrai was one of the chief bastions 



The West Front in 1917— Cambrai 335 

of the Hindenburg zone. It was a vital centre of com- 
munications and base of supplies. Unlike St. Quentin, 
which was out on the fighting line and was partially 
encircled by the Allies, Cambrai lay nearly ten miles 
to the rear. Its security was taken for granted. Ap- 
parently it was less exposed than La Fere, or Douai, or 
Lille. 

Sir Douglas Haig, therefore, took the Germans by 
surprise when he elected to attack on this front. He 
took them even more by surprise through the novelty 
of his tactics. Every other offensive had been heralded 
by artillery preparation of some sort, although the 
duration of "drum fire" had been materially lessened 
in 191 7, compared with 191 6, or even with 191 5. Now 
the British dispensed with "drum fire" altogether. 
For the destruction of the obstacles in the German 
fore zone they depended entirely on the tanks. 

Cambrai was the first battle in which the tank be- 
came the major offensive factor. Four hundred of 
these line breakers were collected and started forward 
at dawn on November 20th. The sky was overcast 
and artificial smoke clouds were also used to cover the 
advance. The result was that the tanks reached the 
German first line almost unobserved, crashed through 
and pushed on over the second line into the open. 
The German defence was stunned. Ten thousand 



336 The Strategy of the Great War 

prisoners were taken in a few hours by the supporting 
troops. The way lay clear for miles back toward 
Cambrai, and the line of the Scheldt River south 
toward Le Catelet. 

The front broken by the British ran north-west and 
south-east — from a point east of Le Catelet to a point 
a little west of Queant. After piercing the centre, a 
part of the British Third Army faced almost north, 
striking for the Cambrai-Bapaume highroad, with 
Bourlon Wood as their immediate objective. Another 
part pushed east for the Scheldt, reaching the Scheldt 
Canal at Marcoing, and again, still further east, at 
Masnieres and Crevecoeur. A blunted salient was thus 
driven into the territory behind the Hindenburg Line, 
that line constituting the base, and the two sides meet- 
ing at an apex at Crevecoeur, directly south of Cam- 
brai. The extreme penetration from the base to the 
apex was between eight and nine miles. 

Many soldiers who took part in the battle have 
recalled the exhilaration they felt in marching through 
a country almost untouched by the war. They had 
lived for months in the artificial desert which Hinden- 
burg had created when he drew out of the Noyon salient. 
They had seen nothing but a barren waste, treeless, 
without vegetation, disfigured with ruins and shell 
holes. Now they were passing along weU-kept roads 



The West Front in 1917— Cambrai 337 

and through up-standing villages and cultivated fields. 
It was an experience which could not fail to impress 
men accustomed to the forbidding limitations of the 
old positional warfare. 

On November 21st the Third Army made some fur- 
ther gains. But German resistance on the north side 
of the triangle, nearest Cambrai, began to stiffen. 
It was the original hope of the British High Command 
to make at least a cavalry raid on Cambrai and destroy 
the stores collected there. But that idea was given up 
and General Byng's efforts were centred on holding 
Bourlon Wood, whose heights commanded the city and 
a long stretch of the Scheldt Valley. To do more than 
that large reinforcements were required and these 
were not at hand. So up to November 26th the British 
fought desperately to clear the wood and hold it against 
continuous German counter-attacks. These proved 
too powerful and in the last days of November the 
British were barely holding their own on the northern 
face of the salient. 

On November 30th a general counter-offensive was 
started by the Germans. It failed on the northern 
face and about the apex. But the southern face of 
the triangle was broken in and the whole British position 
was imperilled. Here the strange experiences of the 
first day's open fighting were repeated. German 



338 The Strategy of the Great War 

columns suddenly appeared far in the rear of the British 
lines. One British general was reported to have escaped 
f-"om his headquarters clad in pajamas. A British 
hospital commander, Sir Conan Doyle reports, was 
astonished to find a German sentry posted at the 
hospital door and sent him out a cup of tea. American 
engineers at work far inside the lines, as they supposed, 
had to throw away their tools and borrow guns to defend 
themselves against enemy detachments. 

The Cambrai salient crumpled up in a few hours. 
General Byng threw in his scanty reserves to save the 
southern front and rapidly withdrew his forces from 
the eastern and northern sectors. About half the 
area originally conquered had to be surrendered. The 
British lost one hundred guns and about six thousand 
prisoners. 

This reverse, as dramatic as the initial victory was, 
obscured for a time the real value of Byng's achieve- 
ment. He was not to blame for the ultimate failure of 
the operation; for he was not adequately supported. 
But the tactical results of the battle were of minor 
importance. Its significance in the history of the war 
lay in the fact that it had reintroduced open warfare. 
It was the last stage in the evolution from trench dead- 
lock to the warfare of movement. 

First, the trench had paralyzed the power of the 



The West Front in 1917— Cambrai 339 

offensive. Then the intensified artillery attack had 
destroyed the resisting power of the trench. The 
Hindenburg lightly held fore zone had succeeded the 
ponderous first -line defences. Now the tank had come 
in to neutralize the "pill box" frontal defence, against 
which "drum fire" was useless. The cycle was com- 
plete. It was only necessary to develop the Byng tank 
attack in order to make every defence line vulnerable. 
But one dependable weapon was left in the hands of 
the defensive — the infantry counter-attack. And when 
the infantry counter-attack constituted the chief and 
final resource of the defensive, infantry had recovered 
its proud and ancient status. Open or semi-open 
methods of warfare were inescapable. 

Byng's attack at Cambrai was the forerunner of the 
Hutier attack at St. Quentin, in March, 191 8, from 
which the British Fifth Army was to suffer so deplor- 
ably. It was equally the forerunner of Foch's relent- 
less "all-front" offensives. 

The German counter-attack had stopped the British 
drive for Cambrai, just as it had stopped the drive for 
Roulers and Lille, in the north, and the drive in April, 
east of Arras, for Douai — if Douai was at that time 
Haig's ultimate objective. But the counter-attack is 
a costly expedient. Its continual use is an admission 
on the part of the commander employing it that his 



340 The Strategy of the Great War 

system of defence has become ineffective. He sup- 
plements the defensive by a limited local offensive. 
Thus he incurs all the tactical risks and handicaps 
of the offensive, without enjoying its compensating 
strategical advantages — the chief among the latter 
being ample time to organize attacks and freedom in 
the choice of the field of action. 

This policy of counter-attack as a prop to the de- 
fensive was distasteful to the German General Staff. 
Circumstances over which the German commanders 
had no control compelled its adoption on an increasing 
scale in 191 7. Freytag-Loringhoven makes this point 
clear in his Deductions from the World War. Although 
the Germans considered themselves superior to the 
Allies in open warfare, they shrank instinctively from 
encouraging anything like a return to open warfare 
while they stood on the defensive on the Western Front. 
Freytag-Loringhoven says : 

According to the notions that prevailed up to that 
time (to the time of the adoption of a strict defensive) 
the possibility might have been considered, where 
our troops were suffering heavy loses as a result of 
holding on under exposure to the fire of the enemy's 
heavy artillery and bomb-throwers, and where the 
latter had done destruction to our trenches, of al- 
lowing the enemy to break through and then driving 
him back again by means of the reserves at the back 
of the line. This procedure was, in fact, from the 



The West Front in 1917— Cambrai 341 

beginning employed several times with success at 
various sections of the front against bodies of the 
enemy's forces which had broken through. To 
extend it systematically to larger sections of the 
front, and thereby on our side to resort to a certain 
extent to the methods of the war of movement, 
seemed to the supreme command for a long time 
inadvisable, in view of the limited forces and artillery 
at their disposition. 

It did not seem advisable to leave large sections 
of the front open to the enemy with a view to sub- 
sequently meeting him in a great offensive engage- 
ment on French or Belgian territory occupied by 
us, thereby giving the situation quite a different 
character from a strategic point-of-view. Such a 
counter-attack on a large scale would have involved 
the reconquest of the newly organized enemy posi- 
tions, and if the counter-attack did not effect a com- 
plete recovery, this method would in course of time 
have amounted to the surrender of larger and larger 
portions of the enemy territory occupied by our 
troops. . . . 

Moreover, quite apart from the moral factor, 
which in these days of extreme publicity has quite 
another significance than was formerly the case, 
and apart from the endeavours of the enemy press 
to exploit for their own ends even our most trifling 
reverses (such reverses as were inevitable from time 
to time) the objects at stake were far too precious to 
justify us in yielding up large stretches of territory, 
even if it were only temporarily. We had to strive 
to turn to the best possible account the produc- 
tive district of Northern France, with its wealth of 
industries. 



342 The Strategy of the Great War 

But after Cambrai it was plain that the defensive 
must always contemplate the possibility of having 
large sections of the front broken, and of having to 
repair those breaches by considerable counter offensives. 
This change in the conditions of warfare operated 
against the Germans, just as the change to rigid posi- 
tional warfare, at the end of 1914, operated against 
the Allies. Germany's natural policy was to maintain 
an alert defensive in the West. After the strength of 
the United States was thrown into the balance against 
her, it was more than ever to her interest that the 
value of the defensive should not be impaired. For if 
open or semi-open warfare became practicable again, 
Germany's hope of holding out against superior Allied 
numbers would quickly vanish. 

Cambrai was therefore one more argument for that 
shift to the offensive which Ludendorff was about to 
make and for which he began preparing only a few 
weeks after his violent counter-attack had broken 
Byng's salient. But on an offensive basis Germany 
could not last long. A quick decision was needed. So 
Ludendorff felt constrained to stake all he had on a 
single throw. If he could not win in the first six 
months of 191 8, he virtually obligated himself to con- 
cede victory to the Allies. 



CHAPTER XVIII 
Italy's part in the war 

The Wars of Liberation in the middle of the last 
century ended Austria's rule in Northern Italy. Ma- 
genta and Solferino freed Lombardy. Sadowa freed 
Venetia. From the political point-of-view, Italy at- 
tained unity and independence. But from the mili- 
tary point-of-view she failed to achieve security. The 
new kingdom was left with an Adriatic coast line desti- 
tute of harbours and naval bases. And the northern 
boundary, as traced on the map, was valueless because 
it lacked all the elements of a true military frontier. 
Austria still commanded the Italian Plain, because she 
retained the passes through the northern mountain 
barrier. 

A glance at the map discloses Italy's predicament. 
There is hardly a shelter along the western Adriatic 
shore from the Straits of Otranto to the Gulf of Venice. 
But the eastern shore is rich in natural harbours — among 
them Cattaro, Fiume, Pola, and Trieste. The north- 
eastern frontier, as it was in 1914, was fairly defensible. 

343 



344 The Strategy of the Great War 

But further west the Austrian Trentino projected like 
a huge sally-port into the heart of Northern Italy. 
Out of the Trentino six passes led to the Italian Plain, 
the westernmost being that of the Adige Valley, the 
historical corridor for Teutonic invasions. The natural 
military frontier of Italy in this region ran about one 
hundred miles to the north of the geographical one, 
covering the Brenner Pass and the Reschen Pass. So 
long as the Brenner Pass, the Upper Adige Valley, Trent, 
and the Val Sugana remained in Austrian hands, Italy 
was left with a neighbour intrenched within her gates. 
In case of war with Austria she would be tied down to 
a choice between a difficult defensive on the Trentino 
front and a precarious offensive along the Isonzo. 

Italy's lack of a defensive frontier vitally affected 
her national policy. Austria was the hereditary enemy. 
But when anger at the French occupation of Tunis 
drove Italy into an alliance with Germany and Austria- 
Hungary, the union, though unnatural, served a defen- 
sive purpose. If Austro-Italian relations were not to 
remain openly hostile, the next best thing was to create 
a concord based on artificial interest. For Italy the en- 
tente with Austria-Hungary was never a matter of the 
heart. But it tided over a period of Italian depres- 
sion and isolation. The Triple AlHance was effected 
in 1882 and lasted thirty-three years. During that 



Italy's Part in the War 345 

period the new Italian state had time to mature and 
consoHdate. 

But an artificial union of this sort couldn't endure. 
Italy and Austria-Hungary travelled divergent paths 
and had conflicting ambitions. Each viewed with 
distrust the other's aspirations in the Balkans. Italy 
still sought a foothold in Northern Africa and looked 
askance at the growing friendship between Germany 
and Turkey. When the Entente Powers guaranteed 
her a free hand in Tripoli she showed no compunctions 
about running counter to Teuton policies. Her war 
with Turkey had strained relations with Berlin and 
Vienna. After the Balkan wars she came into colli- 
sion with Austria-Hungary over Albania. 

The provisions of the Triple Alliance convention 
did not tie Italy fast to her two Teuton associates. 
Strangely enough they actually brought her into conflict 
with them. The compact was defensive in character. 
It bound each signatory to go to the aid of either of 
the others, if "without direct provocation on its part" 
it ' ' should be attacked by another power. ' ' But neither 
Austria-Hungary nor Germany was attacked by an- 
other power. Vienna declared war on Serbia. Ger- 
many declared war on Russia and France. So Italy 
was released mechanically from any obligation, except 
to preserve "a benevolent neutrality." 



34^ The Strategy of the Great War 

But there were other entangling provisions. The 
Triple Alliance compact dealt with the possibility of a 
change of the status quo in the Balkans, or in the 
Turkish possessions in Europe, occasioned by a war in 
which either Italy or Austria-Hungary should become 
engaged. It stipulated that temporary or permanent 
occupation of Balkan or Turkish territory should occur 
only after previous agreement between the two Powers 
and should be accompanied by compensation to the 
non-belligerent ally. Since Austria-Hungary had twice 
invaded Serbia and had made no propositions to 
Italy regarding compensation in case of a temporary 
or permanent occupation of that country, the Italian 
Government began, in December, 19 14, to press for 
concessions, in harmony with the treaty provisions. 

Italy first occupied Avlona on her own motion. 
Then she demanded cessions which would restore to 
her portions of the Italian Irredenta in Trentino and 
Istria and would help to rectify her northern frontier. 

Austria-Hungary met these demands in part. There 
was never any probability that she would meet them 
in full. So Italy gradually drifted into a position in 
which her national policy compelled her to break rela- 
tions with Austria-Hungary and to seek to satisfy her 
territorial aspirations through war. 

The Entente powers needed Italy's help and were will- 



Italy's Part in the War 347 

ing to pay a price for it. The new treaties of alliance 
which she signed on entering the war, fully recognized 
her claims to a defensive northern frontier and also 
gave her a free hand on the eastern shore of the Adri- 
atic. But the circumstances of her quarrel with Austria- 
Hungary and the terms of her adhesion to the Entente 
both inevitably circumscribed her participation in the 
war. Her role was that of a limited partner. Her 
thoughts were centred on the liberation of the Italian 
areas still under the Austrian yoke. She wanted to 
take title to them through the sword, rather than await 
the possibly dubious verdict of a peace conference. 

So the Italian armies were committed to an offensive 
on perhaps the most unpromising front in Europe, 
Results achieved there could not correspond to the 
effort expended, for nature was an enemy more difficult 
to overcome than the Hapsburg legions. 

Moreover the Italian operations, owing to the limita- 
tions of the terrain, could not be co-ordinated help- 
fully with other Entente operations. The Italian enter- 
prise was bound to be an independent and isolated 
one. It could not be linked up with any schemes of 
Allied grand strategy, in so far as any such schemes 
could be considered existent. Italy could contribute 
to the Entente a reinforcement of from three million 
to four million men. But this reinforcement could 



348 The Strategy of the Great War 

never be put to a really telling use, because of the lack 
of Allied unity of command. Italy's political aims 
and her military policy (both entirely justifiable from 
her own point-of-view) operated to aggravate the 
unfortunate dispersion of Allied resources. 

The Italian campaign opened, however, with high 
hopes. General Cadoma concentrated his forces in Vene- 
tia and began an offensive with Trieste as its objective. 
In a week the Italian armies were on the line of the 
Isonzo River, the first barrier of the Austrian strategic 
frontier. They crossed the river above Toknino and 
stormed Monte Nero. Toknino was also taken, and 
below Gorizia, Monfalcone and Gradisca were captured 
early in June. But the bridgehead opposite Gorizia 
held out. It was not forced until August, 1916. 

On the other fronts, which were even more difficult, 
operations in 191 5 were confined chiefly to strengthen- 
ing the defensive positions of the Italian armies. In 
the Adige Valley the Italians pushed north toward the 
city of Trent, reaching Rovereto. Toward the eastern 
end of the Val Sugana they reached Borgo. Only so 
long as they could hold fast there, and on the Upper 
Brenta and Piave fronts, was Cadorna safe in develop- 
ing his offensive toward Laibach and Trieste. 

The Isonzo operation came nearly to a standstill 
after July, 1915. Many months of patient preparation 



Italy's Part in the War 349 

in the way of road building, blasting, levelling, and 
tunnelling v/ere required in order to make the Gorizia 
bridgehead ripe for storming. Even before these pre- 
parations were completed, the Austrian High Com- 
mand demonstrated the inherent weakness of the whole 
Italian position by striking a sudden blow in the West. 
In April, 1915, while the Germans were still battering 
away at Verdun, Field Marshal Conrad Hoetzendorff 
concentrated an army of 300,000 to 350,000 men in 
Southern Tyrol. He borrowed some German 17-inch 
howitzers of the heaviest type to supplement his own 
12-inch Skodas and massed about 750 heavy and 1600 
lighter guns on a thirty mile front from Rovereto to 
Borgo. The ItaHans were completely outclassed in 
artillery. Their positions were poorly consolidated 
and they had always to struggle against the momentum 
of a down-hill attack. 

Hoetzendorff 's assault began on May 14th. It was 
heaviest in the centre, converging in the direction of 
the towns of Arsiero and Asiago, both about eight 
miles inside the Italian border. The ItaHan front 
covering Arsiero was badly broken. By the end of 
• May the Austro-Hungarians had reached their two 
immediate objectives and stood only ten miles from the 
edge of the Venetian Plain. Vicenza, the key to the 
plain, was only twenty miles away. 



350 The Strategy of the Great War 

The vice of the Italian situation was this. The ar- 
mies on the Isonzo — constituting the bulk of the forces 
in the field — were fighting at the eastern end of a long 
corridor. Their main line of communication ran back 
across the Northern Plain from Udine to Treviso, 
to Vicenza, to Verona, to Brescia, and thence to Milan. 
But this line was exposed, all the way to Verona, to 
attacks coming out of the mountains, from ten to 
fifteen miles away. 

Had Hoetzendorff been able to carry his offensive 
to Vicenza, he would have cut the connections of the 
Isonzo armies with their main base — Milan. They 
would have been compelled to retreat in haste out of 
Venetia, not stopping at the Piave, as they did after 
Caporetto, but keeping on to the Adige, thus abandon- 
ing the city of Venice, and practically all Venetia, 
to the enemy. Such a reverse would have come near 
putting Italy out of the war. 

But the Austrian armies didn't reach the plain. 
Russia came to Italy's rescue. The Brusiloff offensive 
of 19 16 was launched ahead of schedule and Austrian 
disasters in VoUiynia and the Bukowina forced Hoetzen- 
dorff to transfer his reserve divisions to the Eastern 
Front. This was the single instance of really effective 
military concert between the Western Powers and Rus- 
sia. Italy benefited by it. But, on the other hand. 



Italy^s Part in the War 351 

it deranged the strategy of the AlHed eastern campaign 
of 19 1 6, depriving Rumania, three months later, of the 
support she expected from Russia and leaving her an 
easy prey to Falkenhayn and Mackensen. 

The Austrian attack had been partially stopped in 
the sector south of Rovereto, before Brusiloff 's offen- 
sive began. It died away after Hoetzendorff's attack 
on the Sette Comuni Plateau, south of Asiago, failed. 
The Austrian armies, depleted by transfers to Galicia, 
now assumed the defensive. They retired to Rovereto, 
under Italian pressure; evacuated Arsiero and Asiago 
and occupied strong positions just inside the Italian 
frontier. There, they remained until the Teuton 
offensive of November, 191 7, although some half- 
hearted attempts to retake the Asiago Plateau were 
made by them in May of that year. 

For the Italians, the Trentino front remained impas- 
sable until the last week of the war. Cadorna had no 
option but to turn again — in July, 1916 — to the Isonzo 
iront. On August 4th he stormed the heights on the 
west bank of the river, covering Gorizia. The Austro- 
Hungarians evacuated the city. King Victor Emmanuel 
entering it on August 9th. 

But the capture of Gorizia left the Italian task 
practically as difficult as ever. To the north-east, 
guarding the road to Laibach, lay the Bainsizza Plateau, 



352 The Strategy of the Great War 

a natural fortress, and to the south-east, protecting 
Trieste, lay the Carso, even more impregnable. Of the 
Carso, against which Italian attacks were to beat in- 
effectually for more than two years. Professor Douglas 
W. Johnson, of Columbia University, says in his 
Topography and Strategy in the War: 

It is not easy, adequately to conceive the stupen- 
dous difficulties of the Carso terrain. The plateau 
is a flat-topped mountain from four to six miles 
broad. Its sides are precipitous and as it rises from 
three or four hundred to more than a thousand feet 
above the surrounding lowlands, it constitutes a 
gigantic rock-waUed castle, whose guns control with 
ease the city of Gorizia, the crossings of the Isonzo, 
and the two pathways to Trieste. . . . Like other 
Karstlands, the surface is excessively irregular, pit- 
ted with sink-holes without number and undermined 
by subterranean caverns. The sink-holes end in 
passageways connecting with the vast labyrinth 
of underground caves and galleries. Nature thus 
provided ready to hand innumerable concealed sites 
for heavy artillery, machine gun emplacements, ob- 
servation stations, and secure underground retreats 
for vast numbers of troops. And what nature offered 
the Austrians had accepted and improved' by long 
years of elaborate fortification. Trenches had been 
cut in the solid rock, elaborate systems of galleries 
and tunnels had been excavated, gun emplace- 
ments had been prepared in pits quarried for the 
purpose, and the whole system connected by covered 
communication trenches and supplied by water 



Italy's Part in the War 353 

pumped up to the thirsty surface and distributed by 
pipe lines. 

Cadorna succeeded in getting a foothold on this 
forbidding fortress, storming the western rim in August, 
and enlarging his gains in September. About forty 
thousand Austro-Hungarian prisoners were taken be- 
tween August 6th and November 4, 191 6. But the 
cost of this effort was disproportionate to the strategi- 
cal result. Trieste remained secure and the Austrian 
High Command was able to maintain the Isonzo lines 
with forces greatly inferior to those employed by Italy. 
The Italian military effort was unprofitably localized. 

Italian strategy was not modified in 191 7. It 
couldn't well be modified, so long as Trieste and the 
Istrian Irredenta remained its objectives. Cadorna's 
spring offensive was delayed by unfavourable weather. 
It began on May 12th with an artillery attack on the 
whole Isonzo front. The infantry now got a lodgment 
on the south-western edge of the Bainsizza Plateau, 
capturing Monte Cucco and the lower slopes of Monte 
Santo. In this direction, Cadorna was trying to pene- 
trate the Chiapovano Valley, which separates the 
main portion of the Bainsizza Plateau from the southern 
section, known as the Ternovane. 

South of Gorizia an assault was made on May 23d 
and the days following on the Carso, particularly on 



354 The Strategy of the Great War 

the lower edge fronting the sea. Here the Itahans 
captured seventeen thousand prisoners and pushed their 
lines to within eleven miles of Trieste. Then the Austro- 
Hungarians counter-attacked and recovered part of 
the ground lost. 

Another major effort was made in August. The 
Second Army, under General Capello, crossed the Upper 
Isonzo and effected a lodgment on the northern edge 
of Bainsizza. Its right wing at the same time enveloped 
the Austrian positions on the south-western edge and 
the enemy withdrew to the eastern side of the plateau. 
Nearer Gorizia the Italians took Monte San Gabriele 
and Monte San Daniele, commanding the Temovane 
Plateau. The Third Army, under the Duke of Aosta, 
renewed the attack on Monte Hermada, which barred 
the coast route to Trieste. No material progress was 
made in that direction. The only serious dent in the 
Austro-Hungarian defence was that in the Bainsizza 
Plateau sector. But the deeper the Italians got into 
the mountains east of Gorizia, the more exposed they 
were to a flanking operation coming through the passes 
to the north-west. 

Cadoma was over-sanguine. He had in mind always 
Laibach and a victorious march like Napoleon the 
First's, through the Julian Alps toward Vienna. There 
were many Italian strategists who insisted that that 



Italy's Part in the War 355 

was the true Allied highway into the heart of the 
enemy's country. Cadorna had not carefully studied 
German General Staff psychology. Nor had he anti- 
cipated the military consequences of Russia's with- 
drawal from the war. Italy's position in the fall of 
191 7, in fact, presented an ominous parallel to Serbia's 
position in the fall of 191 5 and Rumania's position in 
the fall of 191 6. 

Italy's best armies had been tied up for two years 
in the Isonzo venture. They had just finished their 
second 191 7 offensive. The line guarding their flank 
was entrusted to less dependable troops. Against 
those troops, Ludendorff was about to launch a veteran 
German army, brought from the Dvina front, sup- 
plemented by first line Austro-Hungarian divisions re- 
called from Galicia and the Carpathians. To General 
Otto Below was given the role which had been en- 
trusted to Mackensen in Serbia and Rumania. 

The German plan was simplicity itself. Below's 
Fourteenth German Army was collected about the 
headwaters of the Tagliamento and the Isonzo, screened 
from enemy observation. It was to overwhelm the 
weak Italian line, holding the southernmost ridges of 
the Julian Alps and then burst down into the Italian 
Plain toward Cividale and Udine — far in the rear of 
the Italian armies to the east of the lower Isonzo. 



356 The Strategy of the Great War 

The offensive was set for October 24th. It came as 
a nearly complete surprise. Even if it hadn't been a 
surprise, the Italian line could hardly have held. As 
it was, the German gas attacks and heavy artillery 
fire demoralized the Italian defenders, and the infantry 
had little difficulty in breaking through both at and 
above Tolmino and still further north-west, at Capo- 
retto, whence the Natisone River Valley runs south 
to Cividale and Udine. Cividale was taken on October 
28th; Udine, the headquarters of the Italian General 
Staff and the chief base of the Isonzo armies, fell on 
October 30th. 

The Second and Third Italian armies were now threat- 
ened with envelopment. They fled west toward the 
lower Tagliamento. The break-through at Caporetto 
also compromised the Fourth Army, holding the line 
of the Carnic Alps in the upper reaches of the Piave 
River. It was compelled to retreat in even greater 
disorder than the Isonzo forces, for the roads out of 
the mountains were few and bad. 

The first rallying line was the Tagliamento. The 
Italians lost 180,000 prisoners and 1500 guns before 
they halted there. But the Tagliamento line could 
easily be turned from the north. So the retreat con- 
tinued to the Livenza and then to the Piave. This 
last named river furnished a barrier across the Vene- 



Italy's Part in the War 357 

tian Plain, from the sea to the foothills of the Alps, 
whence the line of defence was prolonged west to form 
a junction with the armies in the Brenta and Adige 
sectors. In those sectors the Italians had retired 
toward the precarious positions which they had held 
at the close of the Austrian offensive of 191 6. 

By the middle of November Italy's military power 
seemed on the point of breaking. The great retreat 
had cost in all 250,000 prisoners and 2300 guns. The 
losses in killed and wounded were probably 150,000 
more. French and British divisions had to be sent 
from France to stiffen the new Piave line. Italy was 
humiliated and chagrined. The AlHed publics were 
despondent. 

General Cadoma officially attributed the disaster at 
Caporetto to the bad conduct of the left wing of the 
Second Army. He said in a bulletin issued on October 
28th: 

Lack of resistance on the part of a portion of the 
Second Army, which surrendered either disloyally 
or shamefully, allowed the Austro-German forces 
to break through the left wing of the Italian front. 
The praiseworthy efforts of other troops could not 
prevent the enemy from violating our sacred soil. 

There were many wild rumours of disaffection and 
defeatist propaganda, of cowardice, and incompetency 



358 The Strategy of the Great War 

on the part of both men and officers. But there is 
little reason to think that Below' s victory was due to 
Italian collusion. It was a clear-cut military operation, 
bold in design and executed with admirable precision. 
Probably no other body of Italian troops equal in 
numbers would have succeeded in holding the exposed 
line which a part of the Second Army failed to hold. 
In March, 191 9, General Rosso, one of the commanders 
on the Caporetto front, was tried by court-martial 
and acquitted of charges of negligence and misconduct 
in the face of the enemy. 

The Caporetto disaster was, speaking broadly, the 
natural consequence of Italy's hopelessly exposed posi- 
tion. Below merely did what Hoetzendorff came so 
near doing the year before. Italian defeat was also 
a consequence of Allied disunity of command. Had 
there been but one Allied front in Europe — or even in 
Western Europe — and unified control on that front, 
Italy would never have prolonged her unavailing offen- 
sive against Trieste and Laibach. She would have 
retained ample forces to defend herself on her northern 
border and at the same time would have contributed 
her surplus divisions to some joint Allied effort in a 
more promising field — for instance, to the Salonica 
offensive of 191 6, which was intended to reach Sofia 
and the Danube, but only got as far as Monastir. 



Italy's Part in the War 359 

Caporetto was one more demonstration of the folly 
of Allied go-as-you-please generalship. It led to the 
Rapallo conference of Allied Premiers, which voted for 
unity of control but did nothing more effective than 
appoint an inter-AlHed General Staff. In a speech in 
Paris, on November 12, 191 7, discussing the Rapallo 
meeting, Premier Lloyd George said : 

The Italian disaster necessitated action without 
delay to repair it. It is true that we sent troops to 
Salonica to succour Serbia, but, as always, they were 
sent too late. Half the men who fell in the vain 
effort to pierce the Western Front in September 
that same year, would have saved Serbia, saved the 
Balkans, and completed the blockade of Germany. 
1915 was the year of the Serbian tragedy; 1916 was 
the year of the Rumanian tragedy, which was a re- 
petition of the Serbian story, almost without change. 
National and professional traditions, questions of 
prestige and susceptibiHties, all conspired to ren- 
der our best decisions vain. The war has been 
prolonged by particularism. It will be shortened by 
solidarity. 

Yet particularism was not overcome even by the 
Caporetto tragedy. Powerful influences in Great 
Britain still stood out for divided military control. 
Even British civilians were distrustful of it. William II 
had said in a speech on December 22, 1917: "With 
a centralized direction the German army works in a 



36o The Strategy of the Great War 

centralized manner." He was probably thinking of all 
the armies of the Teutonic alliance, as constituting a 
single German army. And his remark emphasized 
the enormous superiority in that respect of German 
military policy over Allied military policy. It is signi- 
ficant of the obtuseness of English opinion on this 
point, even as late as the winter of 191 8, that The Na- 
tional Review, for January of that year, should have 
resented the Kaiser's matter-of-fact statement as "a 
hint to the Allies to make the mistake of putting a 
Generalissimo over their armies, which would provoke 
friction, as our circumstances are so different from 
those of the enemy, in whose councils only one 
Power counts." It took still another great disas- 
ter — the British defeat before St. Quentin — to wring 
British consent to unified command under General 
Foch. 

General Cadorna was relieved from the command of 
the Italian armies about the middle of November, 
General Diaz taking his place. The new chief's prob- 
lem was to hold fast on the new Piave line. He was 
able to check the enemy on the lower Piave. But in 
the mountain reaches between the Piave and the 
Brenta the Italians were many times in desperate 
straits. Open weather favoured the invaders. Their 
attacks continued through November and up to De- 



Italy's Part in the War 361 

cember 30th. By that time they had taken thirty 
thousand more prisoners and had pushed south to 
within four miles of the Venetian Plain. French and 
British divisions, put in on this front, restored the situa- 
tion to some extent. Then a belated winter intervened 
to save the Piave line. 

During the winter months Below' s Fourteenth German 
Army was shifted to France. The Italian armies were 
strengthened and resupplied with artillery. Notwith- 
standing their favourable position the Austro-Hunga- 
rians were reluctant to resume the attack in the spring 
of 191 8. They preferred to await the result of Luden- 
dorff's offensive in France. Finally Germany de- 
manded action, and on June 15, 1918, Boroevic, who 
had succeeded Hoetzendorff as Austro-Hungarian 
Commander-in-Chief, attacked on the entire front 
— from the Adige to the Adriatic. The Italian mount- 
ain line held firm. The Piave River was crossed at 
many points. But after a week of fighting, the Austro- 
Hungarian attack exhausted itself. The western bank 
of the Piave was re-cleared of the enemy and it was evi- 
dent that Austria's force was spent. Italy had saved 
her last frontier. All she had to do was to stick it 
out there and wait for the end. 

The final Italian offensive, begun on October 24th, 
found the enemy disheartened and clamorous for an 



362 The Strategy of the Great War 

armistice. Before this was granted the ItaHan 
armies had swept back victoriously past the Livenza 
to the Tagliamento and overrun the Venetian Alps 
as far as Feltre and Belluno. Immense stores, five 
hundred thousand prisoners, and five thousand 
guns were captured. The Caporetto disaster was 
avenged. 

But the war ended with the bulk of the Italian forces 
still in Italian territory. The limitations imposed by 
nature on Italian military activities had not been 
overcome. The mountain barriers which obstructed 
egress from the peninsula were never broken. So the 
problem of an Italian offensive against Austria re- 
mained unsolved, despite two years of heroic effort on 
the Isonzo. Fighting her own battle, Italy showed a 
high degree of skill and courage and submitted to 
enormous sacrifices. But her contribution to the 
military power of the Entente (owing to her fatal lack 
of a true military frontier and to the inability of the 
Entente nations to co-ordinate their strategy) did not 
correspond to her actual resources or meet the expecta- 
tions aroused by her entry into the war. This was 
regrettable. But the fault was not Italy's. It lay at 
the door of all the Entente governments, which, up 
nearly to the end, put the wisdom of the politician 
ahead of the wisdom of the soldier, and refused to 



Italy's Part in the War 363 

recognize the fact that neither a league of nations, 
nor an international war college, nor an Allied war 
staff, is competent to conduct an inexorably unified 
and centralized enterprise like war. 



CHAPTER XIX 

ludendorff's gamble 

Germany closed the year 191 7 with an imposing 
mihtary victory. She opened the year 191 8 with an 
amazing diplomatic coup. Italy had almost suffered 
the fate of Serbia and Rumania. Now Russia, without 
a whimper, consented to dismemberment. The treaty 
of Brest-Litovsk, signed by the Kaiser's Bolshevist 
confederates, Lenine and Trotzky, was in a way a 
consequence of the Russian military collapse, which 
had begun even before the Revolution. But it threw 
into Germany's lap spoils which she would hardly have 
dreamed of demanding from any Muscovite regime 
which still believed in Russia's future as a nation. 
Lenine and Trotzky were not Russians in any legitimate 
sense. They were not even Slavs. They were Marx- 
ian fanatics, to whom aU • nationalistic ideals were 
odious. From their point-of-view, the preservation 
of the integrity of the old Romanoff Empire was a 
matter of absolute indifference. 

At Brest-Litovsk the German diplomats gorged 

364 



Ludendorff's Gamble 365 

themselves without compunction. They appropriated 
Finland, the Baltic Provinces, Lithuania, Poland, and 
the Ukraine. They gave Turkey three Trans-Cauca- 
sian districts — Kars, Batum, and Erivan. They prac- 
tically annexed Rumania, which was compelled to 
capitulate when Russia did. But not content with 
the largess of the Russian and Rumanian conventions, 
Germany proceeded to extend her Eastern holdings 
without treaty sanction. She seized the Crimea, occu- 
pied the north shore of the Black Sea as far as Rostov- 
on-the-Don, and converted both the Black Sea and the 
Sea of Azov into German lakes. She forced the Bol- 
shevist leaders to cede Carelia to Finland and permitted 
the Turks to push across Trans-Caucasia to the Cas- 
pian and lay claim to the port and district of Baku. 

In February and March, 1918, the most spacious 
Pan-German visions of a Middle Europe linked up 
with a Middle Asia, were on the verge of reaHzation. 
The only obstacle to complete realization was the 
necessity of first terminating the war in the West. 
On that front Germany had wilfully complicated the 
situation by dragging in the United States. Luden- 
dorfif was now able to add one million men, drawn from 
the Eastern Front, to the German western armies. 
That reinforcement would, doubtless, have enabled 
him, standing on the defensive, to wear down France 



366 The Strategy of the Great War 

and Great Britain, fighting disjointedly and unaided. 
It might even have enabled him, taking the offensive, 
to defeat France and Great Britain, especially since, 
for the moment, Italy had become a liability to the 
Entente, instead of an asset. 

But now, the unrestricted U-boat campaign having 
failed, the American military contribution had to be 
reckoned with. Germany's fight became a fight against 
the hour glass. The German problem was, to choose 
between the offensive and the defensive. Should 
Ludendorff husband his strength in order to repel a 
united Allied attack, coming in the fall of 191 8 or the 
spring of 1919, meanwhile atempting to develop the 
reserve man-power of the new Eastern dependencies? 
Or should he try to put France and Great Britain out 
before the American armies could arrive? 

Ludendorff was the final arbiter at German Grand 
Headquarters. In a speech at Weimar, in March, 1919, 
Philip Scheidemann, Premier of the Provisional Gov- 
ernment, denounced the Grand Quartermaster Gen- 
eral, as a "gambler" or "plunger" (the word he used 
was a borrowed one, hasardeur). This characteriza- 
tion fitted the facts. Ludendorff had the speculative 
instinct. He was willing to stake everything on a 
single throw. He is said to have had something like 
an altercation with the Kaiser over the comparative 



Ludendorff s Gamble 367 

merits of his own venturesome policy, and the cautious 
delaying policy which had underlain Hindenburg's 
strategy in the West, and to have closed it with the 
declaration: "I am a simple soldier, Sire, and my sole 
purpose is to end the war." He did end it — and much 
sooner than anybody expected. 

Ludendorff made no secret of his decision to attack 
in the spring. On the contrary, his intentions were 
freely advertised. The Allies had ample warning 
of what was coming. In a way they may be said to 
have anticipated Ludendorff 's decision. For Field 
Marshal Sir Douglas Haig testifies in his report of Oc- 
tober 21, 191 8, that early in December, 191 7 (that is, 
only a few days after the close of the battle of Cambrai), 
"orders were issued having for their object an imme- 
diate preparation to meet a strong and sustained hos- 
tile offensive; in other words, a defensive policy was 
adopted and all the necessary arrangements, consequent 
thereon, were put in hand with the least possible delay," 

This statement holds good so far as concerns the 
attitude and intentions of the British High Command 
in France. But its control of British resources was 
limited. It would be extravagant to assume that the 
British Government had fully realized the possibilities 
of a German offensive, or had committed itself to the 
military arrangements consequent on such a realiza- 



368 The Strategy of the Great War 

tion. Late in the winter Bonar Law said publicly: "I 
am sceptical of the great German offensive. ' ' And many 
of the British generals in France shared his belief. 
Philip Gibbs, the British war correspondent, reports 
that shortly before the German offensive began he 
talked with thirteen of the division commanders on 
the St. Quentin front. Only two of them thought it 
would materialize. The others said: "It is all bluff." 

In November, 19 17, Premier Lloyd George had said 
in his Paris speech: "The war has been prolonged by 
particularism; it will be shortened by solidarity." 
Yet the old particularism was still allowed to stand in 
the way of unified Allied preparation for the coming 
German onslaught. 

Ludendorff's great initial success west of St. Quentin 
was due in large measure to the shortcomings of the 
Allied system of dual military control. The French 
evidently expected the first German attack to be aimed 
at Paris, instead of Amiens. They thought that it 
would come in the Rheims sector and concentrated 
their reserves on that part of the battle line. Early 
in the fall of 191 7 the French Government began nego- 
tiations with the British Government for an extension 
of the British front in France from St. Quentin down 
to the Oise River in front of La Fdre. This extension 
was agreed to and was to take effect in December. It 



Ludendorff's Gamble 369 

was delayed, however, and was not completed until 
the end of January, 191 8. 

The British line had been prolonged twenty-eight 
miles. But the British armies in France, whose losses 
in 191 7 had amounted to seven hundred thousand, 
had not been adequately reinforced. Charges to that 
effect were made in the spring of 191 8, by leading Brit- 
ish military critics. The fact that the expeditionary 
divisions were reorganized in the winter of 191 7-' 18 
and cut down from thirteen battalions to ten battalions 
apiece — a change obviously embarrassing to the com- 
manders in the field — indicates that the flow of replace- 
ments to the front had sensibly decreased. Three 
divisions had been sent to Italy. The British were, 
therefore, hardly strong enough to risk lengthening 
their line. 

The Fifth Army, under General Sir H. de la P. Gough, 
was assigned to the twenty-eight-mile front taken 
over from the French. In addition, it held fourteen 
miles of the old British line up to Gouzeaucourt. To 
guard this long stretch it had only fourteen infantry 
and three cavalry divisions, the three cavalry and three 
infantry divisions being held in reserve. Only one 
division was allowed to 6750 yards of front. On three 
quarters of the line the troops were new to their posi- 
tions. Three defensive belts were constructed, but 



370 The Strategy of the Great War 

not finished in all details. A strong bridgehead on the 
east bank of the Somme, covering Peronne, had been 
only partially completed when the German onslaught 
came. The state of the defence was, therefore, far 
from reassuring, in view of the enormous superiority 
in numbers which the attack was certain to develop. 

The British Third Army, under General Sir G. H. G. 
Byng, was stationed on the left of the Fifth. It held 
a much shorter line, with eight divisions in the front 
and seven in reserve. The length of front allotted to 
each division was 4700 yards. The proportion of 
reserves was twice as great as it was on the front held 
by the Fifth Army. 

The Fifth Army front presented a singularly easy 
mark to the enemy. Yet the shortage of troops there 
was not based on a mistaken theory that the German 
blow would fall elsewhere. It was not simply a case 
of trusting to Providence. Field Marshal Haig was 
much more willing to lose ground in the south — if 
ground had to be lost anywhere — than on the Flanders 
and Lens- Arras fronts. He had fought all through 
191 7 to improve his positions before Arras and in the 
Ypres sector. There the Germans were much nearer 
to important British bases and lines of communication. 
In the south, however, they stood on ground which had 
been abandoned by the enemy in the Hindenburg 



Ludendorff's Gamble 37i 

retreat and which had been converted into a desolate 
waste. From a military point-of-view this territory 
was in itself comparatively valueless. Expulsion from 
the eastern part of it could not have alarming conse- 
quences, provided the German advance was held up 
at the line of the Somme. 

The British had now adopted the German zone 
system of defence. Cambrai had demonstrated that 
an attack in great force could penetrate the first and 
second positions, and might easily drive clear through 
the defensive zone. The British General Staff had 
worked out a formula, according to which the penetra- 
tion of a successful attack would probably equal half 
the length of the front attacked on. But this formula 
presumed a normal inflow of reserves, which would 
stabilize the defence within three or four days. 

Byng's new style of attack at Cambrai was also 
elaborated by the Germans. They grafted on it fea- 
tures of a method devised by General Hutier and 
used with success in the East in the campaign against 
Riga. One of these features was an amplification of 
the wave system, by which relieving divisions passed 
through divisions which had carried the attack up to 
a certain point. Thus the wearied defence was con- 
tinually confronted by fresh assault troops and the 
impetus of the forward movement was evenly main- 



372 The Strategy of the Great War 

tained. Special formations were also employed to 
rush up the lighter weight field guns. 

This form of attack presumes a marked superiority 
in numbers. But it is always the privilege of the offen- 
sive to attain such superiority locally. In the St. 
Quentin offensive the Germans exploited to the limit 
the advantages of numerical superiority. On a front 
of fifty-four miles they used, on March 21st alone, a 
total of sixty-four divisions. To oppose these the 
Fifth and Third armies had only thirty-two divisions. 
As the battle spread north, nine more German divisions 
and five more British divisions became engaged. On 
the first day — March 21st — according to Field Marshal 
Haig's calculations, the German troops thrown into 
the battle exceeded the total strength of the British 
forces in France. 

Fortune still smiled on German military ventures. 
Ludendorff had picked the weakest spot in the Allied 
line in the West for his first offensive. Long ahead 
he had selected March 21st for the opening of his 
attack. And that morning a dense fog came to his 
assistance. Until i p.m. it was impossible to see more 
than fifty yards in any direction and the enemy had 
little trouble in moving unobserved through the British 
forezone and up to the midzone battle positions. On 
the r reater part of the line they were held there. But 



Ludendorff s Gamble 373 

on the ni^t of March 21st the extreme British right, 
opposite La Fere, was forced to withdraw behind the 
Crozat Canal. 

The first real break came on March 226., west of St. 
Quentin. There the German waves penetrated the 
British battle positions and even the third defensive 
zone. The 50th and 20th divisions of the Fifth Army 
became separated. This necessitated a retreat to the 
Somme bridgehead, east of Peronne, and a drawing 
back of the southern divisions. The Fifth Army re- 
serves were now exhausted. Rather than risk an en- 
gagement on the half-prepared Somme line, General 
Gough ordered a retirement to the west bank of the 
river. On March 23d contact between the Fifth and 
Third armies was broken for a time. German troops 
pushed through the gap and it was now evident that 
these two armies were unequal to the task of re-estab- 
lishing a line west of the Somme, based on Bapaume, 
Chaulnes, and Roye. 

The shortage of local reserves prevented that stiffen- 
ing of the line which usually halts a wearied offensive. 
The Fifth Army was practically worn out. It lost 
sixty per cent, of its effectives during the retreat. The 
French were called on to take over the greatly extended 
Allied line, running west from La Fdre to Noyon and 
Lassigny, and thence north-north-west past Montdidier 



374 The Strategy of the Great War 

toward Amiens. But the French reserves were still 
massed in the Rheims-Soissons sector. It took several 
days to move them around to the Amiens front. Field 
Marshal Haig drew heavily on the Second Army in 
Flanders and also borrowed some divisions from the 
First Army. But these also arrived gradually. For a 
■vj^hile the only support in the rear of the Fifth Army 
was an improvised division, under General Carey, 
composed of stragglers, details, and technical troops, 
including American and Canadian engineers. 

Under these circumstances a stabilization of the 
shattered front was impossible. To make matters 
worse the connection between the British and French 
forces west of the Somme was broken on March 26th. 
Nothing was left to the Allies but to continue their 
retreat, with the expectation of settling down in a new 
line somewhere to the west of Montdidier and in front 
of Amiens. 

At this critical juncture — on March 26th — Foch 
was appointed generalissimo of the Allied forces. Lu- 
dendorff had forced this appointment. In that way 
he had helped to neutralize the victories which the 
German communiques were jubilantly exploiting. Ac- 
cording to German announcements, Ludendorff had 
already captured ninety thousand prisoners and thir- 
teen hundred guns. But the achievement of Allied 



Ludendorff s Gamble 375 

unity of command was cheap at that price. Lack of 
it in the preceding four years had entailed losses 
alongside which those of the St. Quentin retreat were 
negligible. 

By March 28th the AlHed crisis had passed. In order 
to facilitate the operation against Amiens — the key to 
the communications' system linking the French front 
with the British front — Ludendorff was obliged to 
reduce the great northern bastion about Arras. He 
struck along the Scarpe Valley at the right of the British 
First Army, hoping to regain Vimy Ridge, lost in the 
battle of Arras the year before. The assault also 
extended well below Arras, where the British First 
Army had drawn back its lines several miles in order 
to conform with the retirement of the Third Army. 

This German effort was stopped almost in its tracks. 
Its failure had a disconcerting effect on the enemy 
operations further south. For it tended to stop Ger- 
man progress east toward Amiens and to confine it 
to the region south of the Somme, where the liaison 
between the British and French forces was less gravely 
threatened. From March 28th to April 5th the Ger- 
mans continued to make progress south-east of Ami- 
ens, getting beyond Moreuil, in the Avre Valley. But 
the French reserves had now come up and the offensive 
died away, with the Germans still about eight miles 



376 The Strategy of the Great War 

distant from their main objective. The greatest depth 
of the German penetration — due east from Moy, on 
the Oise, to Moreuil, was about thirty-seven miles. 

Ludendorff's success was starthng. In ten days he 
had recovered more than all the territory lost in the 
battle of the Somme and abandoned in the Hindenburg 
retreat. Though Amiens was not reached, it was 
brought under German fire and reduced to ruins. The 
ligature between the French and British armies was 
not severed, but it hung by a few threads. The Ger- 
mans had only to drive down the Somme Valley to 
and beyond Amiens to put a broad, bridgeless estuary 
between the two Allied groups. Then, turning north, 
they would be able to roll up the British right flank 
in the narrow neck of territory between the Somme and 
the Channel coast. The loss of Amiens would have 
been a calamity to the Allies only second to the loss 
of Paris itself. 

Yet the front before Amiens held firm. That was 
because the French reserves had now been shifted 
round toward the apex of the new Montdidier salient 
and were available for the defence of the Avre Valley 
— ^the easiest German line of approach to the Lower 
Somme. Having failed to make any progress there, 
and being unable to shake the British hold on Arras, 
Ludendorff now turned his attention to Flanders. If 



Ludendorff s Gamble 377 

the British armies could not be turned from the south, 
they might be turned from the north, by a break-through 
which would uncover Dunkirk and Calais. 

The second Ludendorff offensive began on April 
9th — on the 20-mile sector north from La Bassee to 
the point where the British line crossed the Comines 
Canal, south-east of Ypres. The initial intensity was 
greatest on the southern half of the line, below Armen- 
tieres, where the Germans, driving north-west, reached 
the Lys and Lawe rivers within twenty-four hours — an 
average advance of about five miles. 

Ludendorff had again selected a depleted front. 
Ten British divisions had been withdrawn from the 
Flanders battle line and sent south to check the Amiens 
drive. They had been replaced by divisions of the 
broken Fifth Army, filled up with drafts hurriedly 
drawn from camps in England. The British positions 
south of Armentieres were held by two Portuguese 
divisions, which were to be relieved on April loth — 
the day after the battle began. 

Again fortune favoured the Germans. A dense fog, 
like that on the St. Quentin front on the morning of 
March 21st, facilitated the attack. The Portuguese, 
taken by surprise, were greatly hindered in their re- 
sistance. Their lines yielded and the enemy poured 
through toward Estaires. West of La Bassee the 55th 



378 The Strategy of the Great War 

British division stood fast, holding Givenchy and 
Festubert and covering the approaches to Bethune. 
But the gap farther north could not be closed by the 
few reserves in hand. On April loth the Germans 
got across the Lys, both at Estaires and farther east, 
and also developed a strong attack in the Messines 
sector. Armentieres was in danger of envelopment 
and had to be evacuated. 

In the succeeding days the Germans broadened out 
their saHent to the south-west and west, passing Mer- 
ville and reaching the eastern edge of the Forest of 
Nieppe. In this direction the greatest German pene- 
tration was eight miles. Farther north, beyond Mete- 
ren, the maximum penetration was about twelve miles. 
These results were in harmony with the formula of a 
penetration equal to half the length of the front attacked 
on. 

The Lys Valley offensive differed materially from the 
St. Quentin offensive in that there was no actual break- 
through, except on the first day and that, except on 
that day, there was no dislocation of the British com- 
mands. The retirement was gradual and when it 
slowed down the Germans found themselves in a flat 
valley country, commanded on the north and north- 
west by ridges and isolated hills. 

Their main objectives were Hazebrouck and Ypres, 



Ludendorff s Gamble 379 

both protected by strong natural obstacles. Luden- 
dorff elected to try first for Ypres, because the fall of 
that city would compel a British retirement from the 
big salient to the east of it which the British had fought 
all through the summer and fall of 191 7 to create, and 
because through Poperinghe — eight miles west of 
Ypres — lay the road to Dunkirk. The aim -of the 
Germans was to smash through the line of hills to the 
south-west of Ypres and take the city in the rear. 
This plan seemed on the point of succeeding at various 
times between April 12 th and April 21st. 

The British were fighting under a great strain. They 
were inferior in numbers and were hard pressed. Field 
Marshal Haig appealed to them in a proclamation — 
issued on April 12th — which almost struck a note of 
despair. He wrote: "Every position must be held 
to the last man. There must be no retirement. With 
our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of 
our cause, each of us must fight to the end." 

The painful impression made by this proclamation 
was heightened by the interview given out on April 
17th by General Sir Frederick Maurice, British Director 
of Military Information, who, after comparing the 
situation to that at Waterloo, remarked: 

It is unpleasant business standing the hammering; 
but so long as we can stand it the only question to 



38o The Strategy of the Great War 

be asked is; "What is happening to Blucher? What 
has become of the reserves?" 

In spite of Haig's admonitions the British had to 
retire. They lost the Messines Ridge, Wytschaete, 
Neuve EgHse, Bailleul, Dranoutre, and Meteren. They 
had to abandon almost the entire salient east of Ypres. 
But the crisis passed by April 21st, when Blucher, in 
the shape of French reinforcements, had arrived. 
French troops took over Mount Kemmel and the line 
south-west of it as far as Meteren. 

Mount Kemmel, it is true, was captured by the 
Germans on April 25th. But on April 29th Amim's 
army, operating on the north side of the Lys Valley 
salient, attacked in force and was completely repulsed. 
After that it was never dangerous. On April i8th an 
equally unsuccessful general attack on the Bethune 
side had practically ended the German drive in that 
direction. 

By the end of April. Ludendorff had succeeded in 
blasting two formidable salients into the Allied lines 
in France. But his real objectives — Amiens, Arras, 
Bethune, Hazebrouck, and Ypres — had not been at- 
tained. He had won striking victories. Yet his 
situation was, on the whole, less satisfactory than it 
had been on March 21st. On that date his armies 
slightly outniimbered those of the Allies, By April 



Ludendorff's Gamble 381 

30th, this superiority no longer existed. The St. 
Quentin disaster had spurred the British Government 
into sending reserves — too long withheld — to France. 
Some divisions were recalled from Palestine and the 
Balkans. More than three hundred thousand men were 
hurried across the Channel from England. 

The American movement had also been vastly ac- 
celerated. Troops were crossing the Atlantic at the rate 
of two hundred thousand a month. Foch's strength 
was rapidly increasing. Ludendorff's was, at best, at 
a standstill. He began asking for Austrian reinforce- 
ments, but didn't get any until late in the summer. 

The strain of the offensive was beginning to tell on 
Ludendorff. It took nearly a month to prepare his 
next blow. This also fell on a sector of the front where 
a good deal of ground could be lost by the Allies with- 
out compromising the military situation. The third 
German offensive was directed against the Ailette 
River-Chemin des Dames line, north of Soissons and 
Rheims — a line naturally strong, but at that moment 
weakly held. The French had stripped this sector in 
order to stiffen their defence of Paris and Amiens. 
Five British divisions had just been transferred there 
for a short period of rest, all of them having fought on 
the Somme in March and four of them having also 
fought in the Lys Valley in April. They held the front 



382 The Strategy of the Great War 

north-west of Rheims, three in the front Hne and two 
in reserve. On their left was the French Sixth Army. 

The German break-through here was more rapid 
and completer than the break-through west of St. 
Quentin. The whole Allied line gave way. The 
drive began on May 27th. In five days the Germans 
had reached the Marne — thirty-one miles from their 
starting point. 

No such progress could have been made if Foch had 
felt obliged to stop the German advance at any cost. 
He sent reserves into action slowly and sparingly, 
confining himself to holding Rheims, on the east, and 
to checking the development toward the west of the 
deep wedge which Ludendorff was thrusting down 
toward the old Marne battlefield. Soissons was lost, 
on May 29th. Chateau-Thierry was entered by the 
enemy, on June ist. Thereafter German effort was 
concentrated on a widening out of the west side of the 
salient, running from a point on the Aisne, west of 
Soissons, south to Chateau-Thierry. 

So long as Foch could keep his grip on the big re- 
entrant angle, projecting north of the Aisne toward 
the Oise, and containing the great forests which are the 
main north-eastern defence of Paris (Compiegne, Villers- 
Cotterets, Laigue, and Ourscamp), any German ad- 
vance below the Marne would be distinctly hazardous. 



Ludendorff's Gamble 383 

So, in the first two weeks in June, Ludendorff sought 
persistently to reach the edges of Villers-Cotterets 
Forest and to infiltrate down the valley of the Ourcq 
River, thus clearing the way for a later operation 
around the southern edge of the forest region toward 
Paris. 

In his first two offensives Ludendorff had successfully 
played the game which Foch was to play later at his 
expense. The St. Quentin and Lys Valley operations 
compelled an elaborate shifting and reshifting of Allied 
troops, thus greatly taxing the defence. Had Foch 
now re- transferred large bodies of French reserves from 
the Montdidier sector to the Marne sector, he would 
again have paid the toll of conforming his strategy 
to the enemy's and would also have inopportunely 
weakened the vital Lassigny front, where the fourth 
German blow was soon to fall. He wisely preferred 
to let the Marne drive run its own course, calling on 
the American Expeditionary Army to check German 
progress at the south-western extremity of the new 
wedge — the point nearest to Paris. 

Early in the spring of 191 8 four American divisions 
— 130,000 men — were ready for battle. On April 
26th the First Division had gone into line in Picardy, 
distinguishing itself a month later by capturing Can- 
tigny, in the Montdidier salient. The Second and 



384 The Strategy of the Great War 

Third divisions were sent early in June to the Chateau- 
Thierry sector, where they helped materially to stabilize 
the Allied line. The Second captured Bouresches, 
north-west of Chateau-Thierry, on June 6th, gaining 
more than two miles on a two and a half mile front. 
On June loth it captured Belleau Wood, where the 
marines showed their mettle, defeating the Prussian 
Guard. The Third Division held the crossings of the 
Marne east from Chateau-Thierry to Jaulgonne. 

Bouresches and Belleau Wood were the first real 
tests of the fighting quality of the American Expedi- 
tionary Force. The way the test was met ended all 
doubts as to the immediate availability of the American 
reinforcement. Foch now had an ample strategical 
reserve in sight, even for 1918, and could begin to plan 
a resumption of the offensive. With an offensive of 
his own in view, he could afford to observe with com- 
placency the net result of Ludendorff's Aisne-Marne 
drive, which had created a quadrilateral pocket, 
twenty-five miles deep and twenty-five miles wide, 
very hard to hold and even harder to get out of. 

His third offensive left Ludendorff in a position in 
which he was bound to attack again for the purpose 
of straightening his lines. The Allied re-entrant angle 
west of Soissons was the obstacle which he needed 
most to remove. Accordingly he launched from Las- 



Ludendorff's Gamble 385 

signy his fourth offensive, a logical extension and con- 
tinuation of the third. It began on June 9th, on a 
front of about twenty miles from the Oise Valley, 
below Noyon, west toward Montdidier. Compidgne 
and the Oise crossings below that city were its object- 
ives. For by taking Compiegne, the Allied re-entrant 
angle east of the Oise would be enveloped on the west, 
just as it had already been enveloped on the east by 
the drive past Soissons to the Marne. There was no 
surprise element in this attack. Foch was prepared 
for it and had devised new tactics to meet it. 

The new method consisted in yielding the front line, 
after an outpost resistance, and meeting the Hutier 
waves further back, when they had begun to inter- 
mingle. The first experiment with the new French 
system was not a complete success. It did not attain 
the smoothness which was to be shown a month later 
against the fifth and last German offensive. But it 
held the enemy to a moderate advance down the valley 
of the little Matz River. The climax of the offensive 
was reached on the third day. But on that day the 
French counter-attacked with great energy, the enemy 
was thrown back on the left and in the centre and for 
all practical purposes the drive was smothered. Its 
maximum penetration was only about six miles. 

The counter-attack of General Mangin's Tenth Army 



386 The Strategy of the Great War 

on June nth marked, in fact, the beginning (then hardly- 
perceptible) of the turn of the tide on the Western 
Front. It showed that Foch had the strength to 
return blow for blow. The long rest which the French 
armies had enjoyed, from the mid-summer of 191 7 to 
the spring of 191 8, had restored their edge and spirit. 
The French military establishment was at the height 
of its power. And it now had behind it the veteran 
British armies and a vast American- reinforcement, 
ambitious, high-strung, eager to prove its worth in 
battle. With a little seasoning the Americans would 
equal the best European shock troops, as Foch and 
Pershing were about to prove. 

The Hutier assault method was already showing 
wear and tear. Like every other German military 
conception it was ponderous and complicated. It had 
not gotten away from the old German theory of mass 
tactics. Its successful operation depended on a smooth 
co-ordination of many factors. Each wave had to 
spend itself and then allow the succeeding wave to 
pass over or through. But if one wave met an insu- 
perable obstruction and came ebbing back, the whole 
operation fell into confusion. 

The Hutier system had another grave drawback. 
It required long preparation and the elaborate train- 
ing of specialty shock troops. There had to be trying 



Ludendorffs Gamble 387 

waits between offensives. Yet every hour's delay 
counted heavily against Ludendorff. Failing south 
of Lassigny, the German High Command took more 
than thirty days to stage the final western offensive. 
But Teuton policy required action somewhere. So 
Ludendorff compelled the reluctant Austro-Hungarian 
armies to strike at the Italians on a line from the mouth 
of the Piave River to the upper reaches of the Brenta 
and the Adige. This southern offensive began some- 
what hopefully on June 15th, but collapsed within 
four days and ended in a decisive Teuton defeat. After 
the retreat across the Piave, Vienna and Budapest 
practically cut out of the war. There was no real 
fight left in the governments or armies of the Dual 
Monarchy. 

Ludendorff, however, still cherished the illusion 
that he could win the war in France. He vastly under- 
estimated Foch's resources. Because Paris was under 
the fire of the "Big Berthas" he thought that France 
would turn chicken-hearted. He was also grossly 
self-deceived about the value of the saHent which he 
had created in the Aisne-Marne sector. He looked 
forward to opening it up to the east and south-east, 
taking Rheims, the great bastion of the Forest of the 
Mountain of Rheims, Epernay and Chalons-sur-Marne, 
thus severing a highly important line of communication 



388 The Strategy of the Great War 

between the Allied armies north-east of Paris and those 
on the Meuse and on the Lorraine border. He never 
dreamed that while he was trying to capture Rheims 
and Chalons, the exposed western face of the Aisne- 
Marne salient might be smashed in. 

The' fifth German offensive opened on July 15th. 
It was the culmination of Ludendorff's win-all-lose-all 
plunges. The ultimate coup remained uncompleted. 
While Ludendorff was in the act of casting the dice, 
Foch snatched the dice-box out of his hands. 



CHAPTER XX 
foch's victory offensive 

The first four of the Ludendorff offensives stood out 
distinctly. They had a unity of character. They 
gathered, broke, culminated, and died away in the same 
ponderously mechanical manner. They left deep in- 
dentations on the Western battle front. Each of them 
seemed to carry the German High Command consider- 
ably nearer its twin objectives — possession of Paris 
and the capture of the Channel ports. 

The fifth offensive differed from the others. In scope 
it was the most grandiose of all. The front attacked 
on was fifty-five miles long, five miles longer than that 
before St. Quentin or Laon, nearly twice as long as that 
before Lassigny and nearly three times as long as that 
before Lille. Masses of shock troops were thrown in 
lavishly. The latest adaptations and refinements of the 
Hutier assault method were also all in evidence. 

But, as in the case of Boroevic's June offensive in 
Venetia, the energy of the attack was too much dissi- 
pated. For the first time the brunt of it did not fall in 

389 



390 The Strategy of the Great War 

the middle of a straight Hne. No central breach was 
made into which there could be a flow of supports from 
the two wings. Nor was the offensive able to finish its 
course. After three days it was swallowed up by the 
Foch counter-offensive. It had nearly broken down on 
the second day. Instead of staging a climax, Luden- 
dorff had staged an anti-climax. There were two reasons 
for this. By July 15, 191 8, German offensive strategy 
had become bankrupt and the temporary superiority 
in man power, on which it was. based, had ceased to 
exist. 

Ludendorff's suppressed fifth offensive dovetailed 
perfectly into Foch's counter-offensive. This was not a 
pure coincidence. Having been balked in the attempt 
to work down the Oise Valley to Compiegne, the Ger- 
man High Command naturally turned next to the 
project of capturing Rheims, Chalons and Epernay and 
clearing the line of the Marne. It was relatively easy 
to foresee the direction from which the fifth German 
blow would be delivered. 

Foch did foresee it. As a consequence he was ready 
to meet an attack everywhere on the long front from 
Chateau-Thierry up past Rheims, and then east of 
Rheims to Massiges. He was also ready to assume the 
offensive himself, if Ludendorff should attack elsewhere 
or hold off too long. 



Foch's Victory Offensive 391 

Ludendorff had little latitude in the choice of his new 
operating front. It is no reflection on his strategy that 
he made the choice which was the most obvious under 
the circumstances and which Foch had anticipated. 
But it is a reflection on the quality of his generalship 
that, absorbed in his own plans and undervaluing the 
initiative of his antagonist, he should have ignored the 
possibility of an Allied operation against the exposed 
west side of the Aisne-Marne salient. 

This front was especially vulnerable because a con- 
centration against it could easily be concealed. The big 
forest of Villers-Cotterets adjoined it on the west and 
further to the west lay the bigger forest of Compiegne. 
In the shelter of these coverts Foch had gathered 
together a force to be used, when opportunity should 
favour, for an attack on the German line from Soissons 
south to Chateau-Thierry. 

Ludendorff was unaware of the existence of this con- 
centration and did not in the least suspect Foch's in- 
tentions. Yet Foch gave him a certain warning. If 
he had been keenly observant he would have noted, and 
correctly interpreted, the numerous nibbling operations 
conducted by the French to the east and north-east of 
Villers-Cotterets Forest in the last two weeks in June 
and the first two weeks in July. Foch was continually 
advancing the French line, acquiring "elbow room" 



392 The Strategy of the Great War 

and seizing advantageous "jumping off" points for an 
attack. Meanwhile he had quietly transferred Mangin's 
Tenth Army from the Lassigny sector to the sector 
west of Soissons and reinforced it with the First and 
Second American divisions. 

Foch knew that Ludendorff must strike again before 
August 1st or confess failure. So he bided his time. 
Ludendorff selected July 15th because July 14th was 
Bastille Day and there was a remote chance that the 
French might relax their vigilance a little while cele- 
brating it. But the French information service had the 
attack scheduled to the hour. On the main front — 
east of Rheims, where there had been no serious fighting 
since the fall of 191 5 — General Gouraud drew back 
from his first line positions, soaked them with gas and 
took the advancing German waves under fire from 
battle positions a couple of miles back. There was no 
sign of even a moderate break-through, like that below 
Lassigny. The German assault was stopped in its 
tracks. Ludendorff had gone to the well once too often 
with the Hutier method. 

The Allied defence of the loop which encircled Rheims 
was equally firm. Rheims, the city, was only a glorious 
memory. It could have been yielded under stress, as 
Soissons had been yielded at the end of May. The 
position of real value in this sector was the Forest 



Foch's Victory Offensive 393 

of the Mountain of Rheims — a few miles south — which 
not only dominated Rheims but barred the road toward 
Epernay. But Foch needed to hold fast on the whole 
eastern side of the Aisne-Marne quadrilateral in order 
to reap the full benefits of his breaking-through opera- 
tion on the west side. 

He could well afford, however, to encourage the Ger- 
mans to cross to the south bank of the Marne between 
Chateau-Thierry and Dormans and also to deepen the 
Aisne-Marne pocket to the south-east in the direction 
of Epernay. Evidently he did accelerate German pro- 
gress in those directions. On July 15th the enemy 
crossed the Marne in force and penetrated about four 
miles up the valley of the little Surmelin River, toward 
Conde. They held an irregular salient on the south 
bank for about five days. The French also readily 
yielded ground further east. There the Germans drove 
a wedge five or six miles deep, on both banks of the 
river, to the edge of the Forest of Epernay. 

By July 1 8th the main German effort had been con- 
centrated in the south-eastern corner of the Aisne- 
Marne salient — just where it suited Foch best to have it 
concentrated. So on the morning of that day the 
Franco-American attack on the Soissons-Chateau- 
Thierry side of the Marne quadrilateral was unleashed. 
It represented the first materialization of the Allied 



394 The Strategy of the Great War 

"strategic reserve. " Foch was popularly credited with 
having collected such a reserve even before he became 
generalissimo. But its existence, prior to June, 1918, 
was probably largely mythical. If Foch had possessed 
a real "strategic reserve" at the time of the German 
drive for Amiens, he would hardly have failed to em- 
ploy it then, when it looked as if the liaison between the 
French and the British armies was about to be broken. 
At that time Ludendorff pooh-poohed Foch's reserve. 
The mistake he made was in pooh-poohing it three 
months later, after one million American soldiers were 
on French soil and more than three hundred thousand — 
including the technical services — were ready for use at 
the Front. 

Foch's blow took Ludendorff absolutely by surprise. 
It was also like a bolt out of a clear sky to the Allied 
publics. They had hardly begun to recover from the 
enormous depression of the spring and early summer 
and still looked on an Allied resumption of the offensive 
as a remote contingency. The meaning of the opera- 
tion was curiously misunderstood at first. Many mili- 
tary critics discussed it as a mere counter-attack, 
intended to relieve German pressure on the eastern and 
south-eastern parts of the Aisne-Marne salient. 

But this was to misread Foch's character. He had 
the aggressive temperament. He had persistently 



Foch's Victory Offensive 395 

lauded the offensive as the surest and most economical 
method of attaining military results. It was certain 
that he would return to it suddenly, dramatically, and 
at the earliest practicable moment. It seemed entirely 
clear to me when the first bulletins of the fighting came 
in, on the afternoon of July i8th, that in a few hours 
the whole character of the war on the Western Front 
had been transformed. I wrote on the evening of 
July 1 8th ("Military Comment," New York Tribune, 
July 19, 1918): 

It is no longer a Ludendorff offensive. Foch has 
intervened. He has started an offensive of his own. 
He is attempting to snatch the initiative out of Luden- 
dorff' s hands. It looks now as if he had succeeded 
in doing so. . . . Foch's attack marks a revolution- 
• ary change of policy. It is the turning point in Allied 
strategy for 191 8. The Allied armies in France no 
longer stand at bay. They have turned on the enemy. 
The vigour and confidence with which Foch inter- 
rupted his defence and struck at the Germans on a 
new field are evidence enough that he no longer feels 
under the necessity of husbanding his strength and of 
yielding territory in preference to involving his re- 
serves too deeply in what might develop into a pre- 
mature finish fight. . . . 

The great significance of the Franco-American 
drive at the German right flank in the Aisne-Mame 
region lies, therefore, in the fact that it was a new 
departure. It was not a counter-attack. It was a 
counter-offensive. 



396 The Strategy of the Great War 

It turned out to be exactly that — the first of the 
series of blows under which the German armies in 
France and Belgium were to recoil, wilt, and finally be 
reduced to begging for an armistice. It was a notice to 
Ludendorff that he had lost his gamble. But Luden- 
dorff closed his eyes and ears to the notice. Bred in the 
General Staff tradition of Prussian military infallibility, 
he refused to recognize that his offensive was over 
and that Germany's only hope of carrying the war 
to a draw lay in an immediate return to a wary and 
economical defensive. 

His own pride of opinion revolted at such an ad- 
mission and he was also able to excuse himself from 
making it on the ground that it would throw the Ger- 
man civilian population into a panic. He recalled his 
divisions from beyond the Marne after the first news of 
the Franco-American successes west of Soissons and 
north-west of Chateau-Thierry reached him. But he 
sought to camouflage to the Germans the sensational 
change which the military situation had undergone 
by unduly prolonging his stay in the Aisne-Mame 
salient, which it was now foolhardy for him to try to 
hold. 

The shape of the salient was such that when the weak 
west side gave way all the rest became worthless for 
Ludendorff's purposes. An Allied advance north-west 



Foch's Victory Offensive 397 

from Chateau-Thierry to the Ourcq River and west 
from the Villers-Cotterets region to Fere-en-Tardenois 
would inevitably squeeze out the rest of the pocket. 
There would not be room left in it for free north-and- 
south communications and the fact that Ludendorff 
had overpacked it with troops and overstocked it with 
munitions and supplies for the drive toward Epernay, 
made a speeded-up evacuation all the more necessary. 

Ludendorff lingered, however. He used up many 
divisions delaying the fall of ' Soissons and Fere-en- 
Tardenois. And this was done not so much for the 
sake of extricating German war material as it was to 
foster the illusion that the German retirement was a 
trifling strategic incident, purely voluntary and involv- 
ing no change in German policy. So the Germans 
stopped longer than they should have stopped at the 
Ourcq, and on the "new lines" between the Ourcq 
and the Vesle, so conspicuously advertised as "per- 
manent" in the German communiques. They tried to 
hold the Vesle, instead of retreating outright to the 
Aisne and the Chemin des Dames. They did, in fact, 
hold the enclave between the Vesle and the Aisne for 
many weeks. 

But all this was "window-dressing" — from the mili- 
tary point-of-view. After his right wing was broken on 
the Soissons-Chateau-Thierry front Ludendorff's first 



398 The Strategy of the Great War 

duty as a strategist was to draw his armies out of all 
the exposed salients in which he had planted them and 
to bring them back to the far shorter and safer Hinden- 
burg Line. But this he was too self-willed and too petu- 
lant to do. He lacked the unsparing clarity of vision and 
intellectual candour of the really great soldier. 

Ludendorff's besetting failure in the last four and 
a half months of the war was his inability to look at the 
facts squarely and without rancour. He continued to 
allow his military operations to be influenced by poli- 
tical considerations and personal interests. By so 
doing he greatly facilitated Foch's task. This was to 
push, squeeze, elbow, and shoulder the German armies 
out of France, disintegrating them in the process. His 
method of pressure was the reverse of Ludendorff 's, the 
reverse of Falkenhayn's, the reverse of Joffre's. Foch 
didn't depend on ponderous, high-geared offensives of 
the Hutier type. He didn't favour long reposes be- 
tween offensives. He maintained an operative front of 
one hundred, one hundred and fifty, or two hundred 
miles, whereas his predecessors had maintained opera- 
tive fronts of fifteen, thirty, or fifty miles. He didn't 
blast and crunch his way forward over restricted areas 
as the Germans did at Verdun. Nor did he "nibble," 
as Joffre did in 191 5, with minute territorial objectives 
and long intervals between the attacks. He preferred 



Foch's Victory Offensive 399 

to distribute his effort evenly and to make it practically 
continuous. 

This new method was made practicable by the nearly 
complete return of the warfare of movement. It was 
also especially adapted to the strategic situation with 
which Foch had to deal. His objective was no longer 
primarily the recovery of French territory. It was the 
destruction of the German Army. To wear down that 
army, now seriously weakened and further handicapped 
by being thrown suddenly on the defensive, was his 
single purpose. An army in modern days is no stronger 
than its reserves. And the easiest way to exhaust the 
German reserves was by shifting and varying the attack, 
imposing on the enemy the constant burden of hurrying 
reinforcements from one sector to another. The Allies 
had felt the weight of this burden after the German 
drives from St. Quentin, from Lille, and from Laon. 
Now it was to become a nightmare to Ludendorff. 

By August 8th the Aisne-Marne salient had been 
cleared up to and a little beyond the Vesle River. This 
left Ludendorff with three more salients on his hands — 
the big Montdidier one, the smaller Lys Valley one, and 
the still smaller one south of Lassigny. They all offered 
tempting marks to an Allied commander-in-chief. To 
stay in those salients until attacked at a disadvantage 
was military folly. But Ludendorff was ashamed to 



400 The Strategy of the Great War 

retire out of any of them — even though he had the as- 
surance to say in exculpation of his ejection from the 
Marne salient: "We left the abandoned ground to the 
enemy according to our regular plan. 'Gain of ground' 
and 'Marne' are only catchwords, without importance 
for the issue of the war. " 

Moreuil, Montdidier, the Lassigny Massif, Bailleul 
and Kemmel may also have been only "catchwords," 
from the point-of-view of Ludendorff , the student of the 
art of war. But as a commander in the field he held 
on to them long after an abandonment "according to 
our regular plan" had become advisable. 

Already in the last half of July Foch had undertaken 
some trying-out operations north of Montdidier which 
foreshadowed an offensive in that quarter. But the 
German High Command was again unobservant. The 
Franco-British attack south of the Somme broke on 
August 8th. A couple of days before that General 
Ardenne, one of the favoured elucidators of Grand 
Headquarters strategy, had written in the Berliner 
Tageblatt: 

"The German offensive has suffered an unpleasant 
interruption, but it will certainly revive. And what 
will contribute to its revival is the fact that the armies 
between the Aisne and the Marne were able to carry 
on their operations with their own reserves, without 
being obliged to draw upon the other reserves, the 



Foch's Victory Offensive 401 

unrestricted possession of which secures the initiative 
to the German supreme Command. " 

Probably Ludendorff had likewise hypnotized him- 
self into this complacent belief. He said in his book of 
reminiscences, written after the war, that he did not 
lose hope of military victory until after the collapse of 
the Montdidier salient. The offensive of August 8th 
caught his generals there asleep. The Allied forces on 
the first day made an advance of eight miles and a half, 
taking one hundred guns, and seven thousand prisoners. 
The German front lines simply melted away. Within 
four days the armies of Hutier and Marwitz — the vic- 
tors of the battle of St. Quentin — had lost forty thou- 
sand prisoners and three hundred guns and were back on 
the rim of the old Noyon salient of 191 4-1 91 6. 

Ludendorff now repeated the mistake he had made 
below the Aisne. He grew irritable and captious. He 
wanted to turn and strike back at Foch and he squan- 
dered many divisions in counter-attacks which had no 
strategical justification. Some of them may have been 
necessary to facilitate the extrication of troops and 
material. But this extrication ought to have been 
already under way long before August 8th. 

Ludendorff finally elected to make a real stand on the 

old Noyon front instead of cutting losses and getting 

back to comparative safety behind the Hindenburg 
26 



402 The Strategy of the Great War 

Line. This was the decisive error of his military policy. 
It entangled him helplessly in Foch's net. 

The real German problem on the West Front after 
July 1 8th was this. The offensive was lost and there 
was practically no chance of recovering it. On what line 
then must the German defence crystallize? Hinden- 
burg's foresight had given the Germans one incompar- 
ably strong position in France. It lay miles back of the 
fronts on which the tide of battle had turned against 
the Germans. There was ample time to rally behind it. 
Every military consideration favoured rallying behind 
it. Open warfare had reached the stage at which no line 
could be held rigidly and absolutely. The defending 
infantry could maintain itself only by being always 
equal to the demands of a counter-attack. So the 
soundest policy for a defence which hoped to stabilize 
itself was to occupy the strongest possible defensive 
zone available, to bring the troops into it unexhausted 
and confident, and to expend no effort in counter-at- 
tacks except that necessary in order to repair breaches 
in this primary line. It was easier for the Germans to 
hold fast in the Hindenburg positions than in any 
others. Why, then, take chances by holding fast in 
the others? 

This problem and the great danger involved in Luden- 
dorff's irascible and irresolute handling of it were set 



Foch's Victory Offensive 403 

forth fully in my "Military Comment" in the New 
York Tribune, while the Germans were still clinging to 
the Bray-Chaulnes-Roye-Noyon line. I quote from 
the Tribune of August 27, 1918: 

When, on July i8th, Foch snatched the initiative 
out of Ludendorff's hands, the latter undoubtedly 
believed that the Allied offensive would be similarly 
broken and spasmodic (like his own). He counted 
on being able to get back easily to a fairly good de- 
fensive line and on being allowed to remain there in 
comparative tranquillity until he could adjust him- 
self to the changed military situation. Hence, 
perhaps, his unreadiness to make a quick and eco- 
nomical retirement. He clung obstinately to the illu- 
sion that he could probably soon recover the offensive ; 
and as a result he submitted to excessive losses in 
men and material trying to hold positions valuable 
for future offensive projects, but worthless and peril- 
ous to armies compelled to defend themselves. 

Foch's aggressive strategy has not imitated 
Ludendorff's. It is not spasmodic, but smoothly 
continuous. It consists in exerting pressure along a 
very broad front and striking successively and rapidly 
at points where the defence seems to be flabbiest. 
Ludendorff ignored his opportunity to retire cheaply 
and in a more or less leisurely manner. Now Foch's 
strategy keeps him from retiring at all, except under 
conditions which involve great risks and heavy 
penalties. He is closely beset on the entire front 
from Arras to Rheims. If he yields too much at any 
point, his whole line is in jeopardy. 

The Germans are paying again and again the 



404 The Strategy of the Great War 

penalty of having grossly underestimated Foch's 
generalship and the fighting strength of the Allies. 
Ludendorff's whole western campaign went to wreck 
when he assumed that he could break the fighting 
spirit of the enemy before September. Now the 
•fighting spirit of his own troops is failing and he is 
tasting about anxiously for a defensive position on 
which he can hold the Allies until the winter season 
sets in. 

"Will that position be the famous Hindenburg 
Line? It may not be. And for this reason. With 
the system of non-rigid defence which is now followed, 
a line is only a line, whatever imposing name you 
may give it. The Hindenburg Line is merely a belt 
or a zone — not a stiff, impregnable barrier. No line 
can be held now except by troops which have the 
stamina, resolution, and numbers to mend it by 
counter-attacks when it is broken. It is a question 
not of trenches or natural obstructions, but of in- 
fantry of sufficient strength and quality. 

When he got back to the Hindenburg Line in Sep- 
tember, Ludendorff couldn't hold it — formidable as it 
was — because he had already sacrificed his best chance 
of holding it. He had lost two hundred thousand pris- 
oners and twenty-five hundred guns on the way back. 
Division after division had been used up fruitlessly 
counter-attacking on the Ourcq, on the Ailette, at 
Noyon, at Lassigny, at Roye, at Chaulnes, at Bapaume, 
all of them of value only as ' ' one-night-stand ' ' positions 
in a retreat to the real German bastion in France. 



Foch's Victory Offensive 405 

The Queant-Drocourt switch of the Hindenburg Line 
was smashed by the British First Army on September 
2d. That was a sufficient portent of the fate of the 
rest of the Hne. The Queant-Drocourt extension was 
completely broken through in a single day's fighting. 
The positions were no stronger than the infantry de- 
fending them. And Field Marshal Haig in his final 
report repeatedly notes the low morale of large sections 
of Ludendorff's army, broken and depressed by the 
slow and costly retirement from the forefront of the 
Albert-Montdidier salient to the shelter of the Hinden- 
burg Line. 

Ludendorff got settled in the Hindenburg positions 
about the middle of September. This was at least a 
month too late. He was fairly well established at the 
southern end of the line — that from Moy through La 
Fere, around the St. Gobain Forest and via the Chemin 
des Dames to the Aisne. There his retreat had never 
been seriously impeded. But on the vital Cambrai- 
St. Quentin front his situation was far from secure. He 
had not sufficient reserves in that sector to stop a really 
determined attack. And once the Hindenburg Line 
caved in anywhere between Cambrai and St. Quentin, 
Germany's grip on France and Belgium had been 
shaken loose. 

Foch's strategy from September on was exceedingly 



4o6 The Strategy of the Great War 

simple. The German armies were spread from Flanders 
south-east to Alsace. They constituted two geographi- 
cal groups, the northern based on Aix-la-Chapelle and 
Cologne, the southern on Metz and Mayence. The 
Belgian Ardennes would intervene to separate them, 
should the northern group be driven back to the line of 
the Meuse in Belgium Such a retirement would cost 
the northern group its lateral communications with the 
southern group — the railroads which come north from 
Mezieres through Maubeuge to Valenciennes and Lille. 
The British armies were to break through the Hinden- 
burg Line and advance to Maubeuge, thus isolating the 
Germans in Western Belgium. American and French 
divisions were to drive north from Verdun to Sedan, 
absolutely cutting the connection between the northern 
and southern German Armies. Then there would be no 
safety for the Germans anywhere west of the Rhine. 

Ludendorff had not grasped the strategy of Foch's 
operation on the west side of the Aisne-Marne salient. 
Possibly he didn't now clearly grasp the strategy of the 
latter's great closing-in operation. He remained un- 
certain and bewildered. He again defended unessential 
portions of his line too long, instead of husbanding his 
strength for use in the critical sectors. Thus he held on 
to Laon after it had become as valueless as Noyon or 
Roye. 



Foch's Victory Offensive 407 

What he could not help having pressed home on him 
was that he needed always reserves and more reserves — 
and didn't have them. Foch had done him out of his 
surplus before the crisis of the war arrived. He evacu- 
ated the Lys Valley salient and stripped the Belgian 
front. Yet he never had enough spare divisions to 
throw in against the British opposite Cambrai and St. 
Quentin and the Americans and French in the Argonne 
sector. 

The Hindenburg Line was completely broken in the 
last days of September and the first days of October. 
Then an advance into Belgium was made and Lille was 
evacuated. Laon fell and Ludendorff drew back on 
the Oise-Aisne front. The American offensive in the 
Meuse region began on September 26th and continued 
almost uninterruptedly until the armistice was signed. 

Ludendorff was satisfied in October that he had lost 
the war. True to Prussian military instincts, he de- 
manded that the German Civil Government sue for 
term-^ Prince Max of Baden, the Imperial Chancellor, 
acted as Ludendorff's mouthpiece. And, in order to 
save the reputation of the General Staff, the plea for 
peace was represented as coming from the German 
public, which was said to be anxious to repudiate its 
false leaders and eager to turn to the ideals of freedom 
and democracy. 



4o8 The Strategy of the Great War 

The General Staff staged both the Kaiser's abdica- 
tion and the German revolution. It was their way of 
falsifying the record. Ludendorff 's apologists will doubt- 
less say that he favoured an armistice because the Ger- 
man civilian population deserted him and a part of the 
army had become undependable and unruly. 

But that tells only a small fraction of the truth. 
Ludendorff sought terms equivalent to surrender 
because he knew that he could neither keep the German 
armies in France and Belgium or get them back into 
Germany. It is admitted by the Germans themselves 
that toward the end of October the German armies 
were retreating toward the line of Antwerp-Brussels- 
Namur-Diedenhofen-Metz. In the Frankfurter Zei- 
tung of January 26, 1919, Major Paulus, a German 
military critic, frankly acknowledged that when Luden- 
dorff was forced to retire to an Antwerp-Brussels- 
Namur line, he was beaten and "finally beaten." 

General Freytag-Loringhoven entered a mild dis- 
claimer to this statement. But Freytag is an interested 
critic. What Major Paulus says is true. Lieutenant- 
Colonel Frederick Palmer, Chief Censor of the American 
Army in France, reports that when Marshal Foch read 
the Berlin communique acknowledging that on Nov- 
ember ist the Americans had at last broken clear 
through the German lines in the Argonne sector and 



Foch's Victory Offensive 409 

were on the outskirts of Sedan, he allowed himself his 
first outburst of emotion since the opening of the Vic- 
tory Offensive. Foch knew that with Sedan in his 
possession the German armies could not escape. Lu- 
dendorff knew so, too. 

The German theory of a peace by accommodation, 
made in the absence of a military decision, may survive 
and be bolstered up by an apochryphal Uterature. But 
it is a mere subterfuge. Set against it the fact that the 
German General Staff accepted the penalties of defeat, 
while Germany was still in possession of tens of thou- 
sands of square miles of Allied territory, when her own 
soil was intact except for a tiny sliver of Alsace, and 
when at least three million of her soldiers stood on 
enemy soil. The German capitulation was unique in 
scope and circimistances. And the circimistances were 
more suggestive of a desire to escape punishment than 
they were of any penitent transformation in German 
politics and character. 

The Allies ended the war victoriously in Palestine, 
in Mesopotamia, in Macedonia, in Venetia, and on the 
Western Front. It was a triumph of unified strategy — 
a swift and brilliant vindication of Foch's appointment 
as generalissimo. In less than seven months the Allies 
had accomplished more in a military sense than they 
had accomplished in the preceding forty-four months. 



410 The Strategy of the Great War 

There is a striking parallel between the closing period 
of the Worid War and the American Civil War. Up to 
the end of 1863 the North had made little effective use 
of its superior resources. Authority was dispersed. 
There was no centralization of command, no common 
plan of action for the eastern and western fronts. The 
President, the Secretary of War, the Major-General 
nominally commanding the armies from a desk in the 
Secretary of War's office, all interfered with the generals 
in the field. There was a multiplication of independent 
military departments. The war was conducted in 
accordance with the circuitous methods of civil govern- 
ment and politics. After many bitter lessons President 
Lincoln recognized the absurdity of this policy. He 
made Grant commander-in-chief and relieved him ab- 
solutely of the handicap of dictation from Washington. 
"The particulars of your plan I neither know nor seek 
to know, " he wrote to Grant on April 30, 1864. "You 
are vigilant and self-reliant ; and I am pleased with this. 
I wish not to obtrude any constraints or restraints on 
you." 

"It was not until after both Gettysburg and Vicks- 
burg, " said General William T. Sherman, "that the 
war professionally began." The Allied Governments 
were even slower than Lincoln in learning one of the 
most obvious of military lessons. That was the great 



Foch's Victory Offensive 411 

tragedy of the war on their side. They conducted the 
struggle for nearly four years more or less unprofession- 
ally. They had — at least after 19 17 — resources greatly 
superior to Germany's. But they had to conquer their 
own separatist tendencies before they could conquer 
the enemy. 

Foch's strategy as generalissimo was almost without a 
flaw. After he arrived the laurels of the German com- 
manders-in-chief faded. He was the "happy warrior" 
whom a great cause had long awaited. Modest, serene, 
imperturbable, cool in counsel and resolute in action, 
he rose brilliantly to every occasion which presented 
itself— at Morhange, at the Marne, in Flanders, in 
Artois, in the Victory Offensive. 

"The war was won by faith, " said Foch in a state- 
ment issued in March, 1919. So far as he contributed 
to win it — and his share was greater than any other 
man's — it was won by a superb combination of faith 
and genius. 



INDEX 



Activists, Belgian, 14 

Aisne, battle of , 1914, 142-144; 

1917.330. 331 
Albert of Belgium, 143 
Alexieflf, 174 
AUenby, 211, 324 
Allied Military Council, 105 
America, Germany's challenge 

to, 303-323 
Antwerp, siege of, 144, 145 
Aosta, Duke of, 354 
Arabic case, 309, 310 
Ardenne, 239, 400 
Argonne, battle of the, 406, 

407, 408 
Arnim, 329, 388 
Arras, battle of, 325-327 
Artois, battles of, 228,229,232, 

233 
Attrition, theory of, 23, 27 
Auffenberg, 34, 35, 166 
Avarescu, 297, 327 
Azan, 235, 236, 238 



B 



Ballin, letter to Rathenau, 63- 

65. 

Baltic Provinces, Germaniza- 
tion of, 16, 17, 317-320 

Belgian atrocities, 1 1 

Belgian neutrahty, violation of, 
10, 49, 50 

Belgium, Germanization of, 
10, 15 

Belleau Wood, battle of, 384 

Belloc, Hilaire, 23 

Below, 355 

Bernhardi, 20, 48, 112 

Bemstorff, 309 

Be'thmann-HoUweg, 96, 304 

Bismarck, 21-22 



Bissing, 13, 14 

Blockade, effects of, 74-76 

Bolo Pasha, 332 

Boroevic, 361, 389 

Bouresches, battle of, 384 

Bratiano, 301 

Brest-Litovsk, 209 ; Treaty of, 

319, 320, 364, 365 
Briand, 332 
Briey, 245, 248, 249 
Brusiloff, 76, 94, 105, 117, 166, 

174, 201, 204, 265, 267, 285, 

286, 290 
Bulgaria, 24, 47, 48 
Biilow, 124, 126, 131, 134, 135 
Byng, 337, 338, 339, 342, 370, 

371 



Cadorna, 348, 351, 353, 354, 

355, 357, 360 
Caillaux, 332 
Callwell, 198 
Cambrai, battle of, 240, 334- 

342 
Capello, 354 
Caporetto, battle of, 97, 355- 

359 
Garden, 188 
Carey, 374 

Carpathians, battle of the, 173 
Carso, the, 352-354 
Castelnau, de, 125, 138, 144, 

253 
Central Powers, military 

strength of, 24, 25 
Champagne, battle of, 231, 

232 
Churchill, Winston, 145, 194, 

197 
Clemenceau, 332 
Constantine of Greece, 45-47, 

216, 217, 291, 295, 300 



413, 



414 



Index 



Cost of the war, 80, 81 

Cromer, 197 

Czarina of Russia, 46, 283, 

284, 289 
Czernin, 319 

D 

Dankl, 34, 166 

Dardanelles, 41-44, 102, 113- 

115, 176-191 
Dead Man's Hill, 256, 257 
D'Amade, 191 
D'Esperey, 134, 135, 211 
Delcasse, 217 
DeRobeck, 188 
Diaz, 360 

Diaz-Retg, 244, 245, 247, 264 
Dimitrieff, 204 
Doyle, Sir Conan, 338 
Dubail, 125, 138 
Dubno, 210 
Dunajec, battle of the, 201- 

208, 250, 251 



E 



"Easterners" and "Western- 
ers," 106, 107, 116, 194- 
196 

Eichhorn, 17 

Emden, 54 

Entente Powers, military 
strength of, 24, 25 

En ver Pasha, 182, 187 



Falkenhausen, 14, 15 

Falkenhayn, 93, 200, 203, 208, 
211, 218, 220, 241, 242, 244, 
246, 247, 248, 250, 251, 254, 
255, 256, 257, 273, 297, 304, 
398 

Falkland Islands, battle of, 

54 
Farragut, 179 
Ferdinand of Bulgaria, 45-48, 

216 
Festubert, battle of, 228 
Finland, Germanization of, 17, 

317-320 
Fisher, Lord, 189 
Flanders, battle of, 1914, 139- 

157 



Flanders campaign, 191 7, 328- 

330 

Fleming- Walloon issue in Bel- 
gium, 12-15 
Flemish autonomy, 13, 14 
Flemish literary revival, 12, 14 
Foch, 104, 117, 135, 144, 150, 
211, 228, 262, 291, 313, 331, 
374. 382, 383, 384, 385, 386, 
388 
Foch's Victory Offensive, 389- 

411 
Franco-Russian military com- 
pact, 107-112 
French Revolution, 4, 6 
French, Sir John, 126, 134, 

231 
Freytag-Loringhoven, 29, 67, 
68, 76, 86, 87, 88, 122, 123, 

137. 152, 153, 156, 157. 175, 
176, 212, 213, 340, 341, 408 



Gallipoli, 157, 178-198, 226 

German colonial policy, 61-63 

Gibbs, Philip, 368 

Goeben, battle-cruiser, 41-43 

Goltz, 181, 186 

Gough, 369, 373 

Gouraud. 392 

Gourko, 164, 206, 207, 282, 

283, 289, 290, 301 
Grand Duke Nicholas, 173, 

174, 209 
Grant, 410 
Greece, 45, 46 
Grey, Sir Edward, 44, 45, 65, 

217 
Grossetti, 150 
Gumbinnen, battle of, no 

H 

Haig, 263, 274, 275, 276, 327, 

335, 367, 370. 372, 374. 379. 

380, 405 
Hamilton, Ian, 191, 193 
Hanotaux, 139, 140 
Harden, Maximilian, 37 
Hausen, 124, 125, 126, 134, 135 
Herr, 253, 254 
Hmdenburg, 32, 33, 91-93, 95, 

96, 163, 164, 167, 168, 169, 

170, 173, 208, 211, 243, 262, 



Index 



415 



Hindenburg — Continued 

263, 273, 302, 303, 304, 306, 

325, 332 
Hindenburg Line, 225, 226, 

239, 240, 278-280, 402-407 
Hindenburg's retreat, 276-280 
Hoetzendorff, 172, 349, 350. 

351,358,361 
Hoffmann, 213, 320, 322 
Humbert, 332 
Hutier, 203, 321, 339, 37 1, 

386, 389, 401 



Italy in the war, loi, 104, 343- 

363 
Ivanoff, 166, 174 



Jagow, 304, 305 

Joffre, 49, III, 112, 113, 123, 
124, 127, 128, 129, 133, 135, 
137, 138, 139. 140, 143, 146, 
153, 156, 171, 221, 222, 264, 

398 
Johnson, Prof. D. W., 352 



K 



Kaledin, 286, 287 
Kerensky, 315, 318, 319 
Kitchener, 183, 191, 197, 198, 

224 
Kluck, 124, 130, 131, 133, 134, 

135, 137, i40> 142, 221 
Korniloff, 315. 3i6, 318 
Kovno, 209, 213 
Krasnik, battle of, 34, 159 
Ku^opatkin, 161, 174, 284, 285 
Kut-el-Amara, 115 



Langle de Gary, 125, 126, 129, 

134. 253, 254 
Lanrezac, 124, 126, 134 
Law, Bonar, 368 
Lee, 226 
Lemberg, battles of, 159, 208, 

209 
Lenine, 315, 318, 320, 364 
Lens, 228 
Lesh, 287, 288 



Letchitsky, 286, 288, 316 
Lincoln, 410 

Lissauer, Hymn of Hate, 1 50 
Lloyd George, 36, 104, 299, 

359, 368 
Lodz, battle of, 168 
Loos, battle of, 232, 233 
Lublin, campaigns for, 34, 159, 

209, 211 
Ludendorff, 38, 95, 96, 97, 98, 
128, 239, 280, 306, 307, 314, 
317,318,319. 320, 321, 322, 
342,396-411 
LudendorflE's gamble, 364-388 
Ludendorff 's offensives, 191 8: 
first, 368-377; second, 377- 
381; third, 381-384; fourth, 
384-387; fifth, 388-394 
Lusitania case, 57, 308-310 

M 

Mackensen, 92, 173, 202, 203, 
211, 216, 218, 296, 297, 298, 
299, 302 
Madelin, 120, 121 
Malvy, 332 

Man power in the war, 24, 27 
Mangin, 258, 385, 392 
Mannerheim, 318 
Marne, first battle of, 49-51, 
85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 1 19-138; 
second battle of, 381-385, 
390-401 
Marwitz, 401 
Maubeuge, 122, 171 
Maunoury, 125, 132, 133, 134 
Maurice, 194, 195, 379 
Max of Baden, 407 
Mazurian Lakes, battle of, 170 
Meade, 226 
Mercier, 14 
Mertens, 187, 188 
Messines Ridge, battle of, 328, 

329 
Mittel-Europa, creation of, 

203-220 
Moltke, the Elder, 20, 83-87, 
90, 247; the Younger, 83-87, 
138, 143, 171, 200, 211, 246, 
247 
Morgenthau, 43, 181, 182, 187, 

188 
Muhlon, Dr. Wilhelm, 18, 38, 
87, 163, 164 



4i6 



Index ^ 



N 

Napoleon I, 5, 6, 317, 322; mili- 
tary policy in Europe, 5-7, 

^7 

Napoleonic Empire, 5, 6 
Neufchateau, battle of, 126 
Neuve Chapelle, battle of, 203, 

227, 228, 230 
" Nibbling, " Joffre's, 221-240 
Nicholas II, 210, 282, 283 
Nivelle, 258, 331 
Numbers in the war, 23, 25 



Painlev^, 332 

Palat, 140, 141 

Palmer, 408 

Pan-German delusions, 2, 3 

Pau, 124 

Paulus, 408 

Persius, 73 

P^tain, 231, 253, 254, 255, 

331. 332,333 

Piave, battle of, 361, 387 

Poland, Germanization of, 8, 
15, 16, 317, 320 

Positional warfare, develop- 
ment of, 221-240 

Prague, treaty of, 9 

Protopopoflf, 282, 283, 289, 
300, 302 

Prussia, Crown Prince of, 125, 
134,142,245,332,333 

Prussia, growth of, 20, 22 

Przemysl, 158, 167, 168, 172, 
201, 202, 208 



R 



Rawa-Russka, 35, 208, 209 
Rawlinson, 149, 274 
Reiriach, 127 
Rennenkampf, 162, 168 
Ribot, 332 
Riga, battle of, 316 
Roda-Roda, 31, 205, 283 
Rome as an empire builder, 

3-4 
Rosso, 358 
Rovno, 210 
Ruffey, 125, 126, 134 



Rumania, 94, 291-301; treaty 

with the Entente, 294, 295 
Rupprecht of Bavaria, 144, 

159 

Russia, early successes, 158- 
177; collapse of, 281-291, 

314-323 . 
Russian military deficiencies, 

29-31 
Russian Revolution, 96, 314- 

320 
Russky, 166, 174, 208 



Sakharov, 286, 297 
Salonica, 244, 246 
Samsonoff, 163, 164 
Sarrail, 134, 218, 246, 265, 291, 

295- 296, 300 
Scheidemann, 366 
Scherbatchev, 286, 287, 288 
Schiller, Ring of Polykrates, 40, 

41, 59 
Schleswig-Holstein, 8, 9, 137 
Schlieffen, 84, 87-89, 127, 131, 

136, I37> 138, 211 
Schreiner, 187, 188 ■ 
Scott, Admiral Sir Percy, 55 
Sea power in the war, 60-79 
Serbia, 45, 47 
Sherman, 410 
Somme, battle of, 261-276 
St. Gond, marshes of, 121 
St. Mihiel, 142 
St. Quentin, battle of, 368- 

377 

Stegemann, 122, 136 

Strategy, development of Al- 
lied, 1 00-118; development 
of German, 80-99 

Stiirmer, 46, 282, 283, 289, 
300, 302 

Sussex note, 304, 305, 310, 



Talaat Pasha, 182 
Tannenberg, battle of, 91, no, 

163-165 
Tigris expedition, 115, 116 
Tirpitz, 38, 69-73, 303 



Index 



417 



Trench warfare, 51-53. 112, 

"3,233-240 
Trotzky, 315, 318, 320, 364 
Turkey, entry into the war, 91 



U 



U-boat, 54-58, 77, 78 _ 
Ukraine, Germanization of, 

16-17, 317-320 
United States, relations with 

Germany, 57, 58, 303-323 



V 



Venizelos, 45, 47, 217 
Verdun, battle of, 93, 220, 224, 
241-260 



W 

Wangenheim, 180, 181, 182 
Weddigen, 148 

William II, 37, 60, 61, 322, 351 
Wiirttemberg, Grand Duke of, 
125, 134, 142 



Ypres, first battle of, 151 ; sec- 
ond battle of, 22 1 , 222 
Yser, battle of the, 150, 151 



Zabern incident, 7 



ar 



The World War 

And Its Consequences 

By 

William Herbert Hobbs 

With an Introduction by 

Theodore Roosevelt 



Theodore Roosevelt said, after a 
careful reading of the Manuscript: "It 
is the literal truth, that if I could choose 
only one book to be put in the hand of 
every man and woman in the United 
States, I would choose the book of 
Professor Hobbs.'' 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York London 



The Chaos in Europe 

By 

Frederick Moore 

Author of "The Balkan Trail," "The Passing of Morocco," •to. 
With an Introduction by 

Charles W. Eliot, LL.D. 

President Emeritus, Harvard University 



A Consideration of the Political De- 
struction that has taken place in Russia 
and Elsewhere and of the International 
Policies of America. 

The author has had a rare experience 
as a correspondent, qualifying him to 
a remarkable degree to describe the 
present military and political situation. 
His suggestions referring to the future 
foreign policy of the United States 
merit the careful attention of leaders 
of opinion. 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York London 



The Evidence in 
the Case 

A Discussion of the Moral Responsibility for the War of 

1914, as Disclosed by the Diplomatic Records 

of England, Germany, Russia, France 

Austria, and Belgium 

By 
JAMES M. BECK, LL.D. 

Late Assistant Attorney-General of the U. S. 
With an Introduction by 

The Hon. JOSEPH H. CHOATE 

Late U. S. Ambassador to Great Britain 

15th Printing — Revised Edition with much Additional 
Material 

" Mr. Beck's book is so extremely interesting 
from beginning to end that it is difficult when 
once begun to lay it down and break off the 
reading, and we are not surprised to hear not 
only that it has had an immense sale in England 
and America, but that its translation into the 
languages of the other nations of Europe has 
been demanded." — Hon. Joseph H. Choate in 
The New York Times. 

New York G. P. Putnam's Sons London 



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